Hard Knocks
by muggleborn.dragon.ryder
Summary: Stoick was just a wealthy yet isolated bachelor who just happened to be running for mayor. Hiccup was a foster kid who just happened to run out in front of a car one frigid winter day. Stoick just happened to save him. And, oh yes - seemingly everyone in the small town of Berk knows. Hiccup doesn't dare hope the man's attention means anything, but he does wonder. Annie AU.
1. Chapter 1

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: My new HTTYD story! Inspired by the new movie coming out at Christmas, 'Annie'. I seriously considered waiting until the movie came out to even write the first chapter, but my friend encouraged me to write this because (her words exactly) "Your version will be so much angstier!" I suspect I've earned a name for myself xD**

**ALSO LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I AM PULLING THINGS OUT OF MY REAR ABOUT POLITICS. **

* * *

Stoick couldn't remember a time when it had been too cold for snow. He had grown up in the small town of Berk, Ohio, and it seemed to snow nine months of the year there, and hail the other three. The harsh weather wasn't a drawback to him; half the time, the snow and ice reflected his mood. But today, there was nothing but the pure, reflective white ice everywhere he looked, covering cars and coating the sides of buildings. Streets were frosted over and cars kept going skidding on the roads.

Stoick's Thunderdrum was in the shop after a particularly nasty scratch from the day before, when the ice had been even slicker, and he had gone skidding. How he had walked away with not a scratch was still heavily debated, but he himself had chalked it up to his genes, which had granted him an abnormally strong body. He could have borrowed his friend Gobber's car, but walking might have done him some good; he didn't want to get into another accident so soon after the first, or the people of Berk might start thinking he was careless with his own safety.

And they couldn't start thinking that, because he still had an election to win. He closed his eyes as he thought of it, the thing that had been plaguing his mind for the past week or so. He had always wanted to give something back to the town he had grown up in, even though it didn't always hold perfectly happy memories for him. It still held memories of his parents' funeral, and one of his best friends moving away only a few weeks after. That had been the hardest year of his life, but he had gotten through it. Muscled through it, really, just the way he always had. He didn't like needing help, so he had vowed to himself that he never would need it again, not after what had happened to his mother and father.

He tried to turn his mind back to the election, to rid himself of his emotions, the way he had tried so hard to do all his life, when the screech of tires made him glance up just before, to his horror, he saw it was not careless driving or icy roads that had made the driver slam on the brakes. There was a boy running out into the road, surely no more than twelve or thirteen, staring in horror at the windshield as the car drew nearer and nearer, unable to stop. He threw himself forward, but his sprint wasn't enough to bring him fully out of the way; his legs were still half in the road, and he had grabbed at the front of Stoick's jeans to stop himself from falling completely.

Stoick had mere seconds in which to act, and he did the only thing he knew to do; he grabbed the boy out of the road, depositing him safely on the sidewalk and keeping an arm locked around him, in case he decided to try and cheat death again. The car went spinning harmlessly onward, and the driver regained control fairly quickly. Stoick looked down at the boy in his arms, studying the small face.

He had bright, emerald green eyes, flyaway auburn hair that stuck up everywhere, more freckles than Stoick could even count, and, to the man's surprise, he was not dressed suitably for the cold weather. He had on a green T-shirt and a thin brown jacket that barely kept out the cold, it was clear by the way the boy shuddered with cold.

"Why did you run out into the road?" Stoick demanded of him, a bit harsher than he ought to have, because he was still a bit shaky from the sudden adrenaline rush. "Why are you running?"

The boy did not appear perturbed by the fact that he had just narrowly escaped death or severe injury. He broke out into a broad grin, his green eyes beginning to sparkle. "Gets me places quicker."

And then he dashed back out into the road once more, streaking off down the opposite sidewalk, bumping into a ton of people as he went.

Stoick rolled his eyes as he watched the boy run. "Crazy kids," he muttered to himself. The auburn-haired boy disappeared into the crowd of people, and the mayor hopeful allowed himself to shrug it off before continuing on his way.

* * *

Stoick had just recently bought himself a new cell phone, as his old one had died rather suddenly and inexplicably. Thus, he had not yet set a ring tone, so right now, it was perhaps the most annoying jingle he had ever heard. But at least it got him to answer quickly. When he spotted the contact name on the caller ID, announcing it was Gobber, his good friend and campaign manager, he flicked it open and put it to his ear, sure that the man was going to announce that his polls had shot up by two or three percent this week. Stoick wasn't expecting much, so he was completely astonished when the excited, heavily-accented voice practically yelled in his ear.

"Stoick! Stoick! You went up by almost sixty percent in the polls this week!"

"What?" The red-haired man couldn't hope to form another word than that; in fact, for a moment he pulled the phone away and stared at the screen to make sure this wasn't some elaborate joke. "Wait, what happened?"

"You tell me!" Gobber boomed into the phone. "Apparently, you saved a kid's life?!"

"I what?" Stoick yelled back, before remembering the strange, skinny auburn-haired boy whom he had pulled out of the street. He certainly wouldn't have referred to it as saving a child's life, but people in the town were hungry for excitement, and they tended to take a story and run with it. But everything did make much more sense about his stance in the polls.

"This looks brilliant for your election!" Gobber was saying enthusiastically. "The kid's a thirteen-year-old orphan from an all-male orphanage, this looks great!"

Stoick turned this news over in his mind as best as he could, but he was still a little uncertain. "I guess it does," he agreed faintly, sitting down at his kitchen table. He couldn't help seeing the boy again and again in his mind's eye. A split second decision had led to a sudden change in his polls, but he hadn't meant for that to happen. He just didn't want to see a kid get run over…

"You know what you have to do, right?" Gobber was saying when Stoick zoned back in.

"Huh?" he asked, not following.

"You've got to stick with this, milk it for all it's worth! I've got the name of the orphanage the kid's living in right now – you got to get him and be seen with him again, this could be huge!"


	2. Chapter 2

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: It's been awhile since I posted on this story, huh? I got really lazy and I don't know how orphanages work, so I let this story fall by the wayside. However, I am reasonably confident that I kept things accurate and that I didn't stretch anything. Will anybody let me know if I did? **

**(Again, I'm pulling any and all political things out of my rear end, and it probably shows.) **

* * *

This might sound a little strange, considering that Hiccup lived in an orphanage, but he didn't want to be adopted. He couldn't imagine accepting a stranger's kindness, a stranger's pity. He had watched the kids come and go all his life, and with every kid that left, the other boys would chorus, "He'll be back in three days, tops."

Hiccup tried to stay positive, but it was hard. Nobody had ever shown any interest in adopting him before, and while that was all well and good with him, the one thing he really wanted was the thing it appeared he was farthest from getting: finding his birth parents. He had never even known his mother or father, and so far, in his thirteen years of searching, he had seen no one who even remotely resembled the description that the motherly headmistress of the orphanage had given him.

So, when the blue Thunderdrum pulled up outside the orphanage building, he crowded around excitedly at the windows to look with all the other boys, but he didn't bother wondering if it was for him; he just hoped that whoever it was for was heading off to a good home. The man who climbed out of the driver's side was one who sent a bolt of recognition running through the thirteen-year-old. Wasn't this the man who had grabbed him out of the way of the moving car that day? He wondered idly who the man could possibly be looking to adopt, and if he had ever even thanked the man. If not for him, Hiccup's legs would have gotten crushed by the car tires, and just the idea made him wince.

Another man opened the passenger side door, a blonde man this time, slightly shorter and rounder than Wonder Beard, as Hiccup decided to christen him. That facial hair was the largest he had ever seen, and he couldn't resist a tiny smile at the thought. He put his face closer to the window, until he felt a tug on his shirt; looking down, he saw tiny Gustav staring up at him with those large gray eyes. "Who is it? What's going on?" The excitable but shy little boy asked.

Hiccup smiled, picking the five-year-old up and letting him get a look for himself. "See, Gustav, somebody's getting adopted today! Aren't you excited?"

Gustav twisted around to look hopefully. "Is it me? Are they coming for me?"

"Maybe," Hiccup responded. He felt a sudden desire to make sure that it was Gustav whom Wonder Beard picked.

"Or maybe it's you?" Gustav added.

Hiccup shrugged in response; his hopes for that particular occurrence were not high. How could they be? Nobody had ever wanted him before.

He slid away from the window with a sigh, cutting his gaze to the other boys crowded around him. He was sure that Wonder Beard was going to pass right over him, as everybody had. Oh, and there was nothing wrong with that, of course; like he said, he didn't really want to be adopted. He wanted to find his birth parents, that was all. Still, it was depressing when you were told a dozen times a day that nobody wanted you, until it was told to you so much that you realized nobody in your whole life was ever going to want you.

And that was another thing. When – not if – Hiccup really did find his parents, who's to say that they were going to want him after all?

* * *

For a man who was looking only to take out to lunch, not adopt, a child from this orphanage, there sure was a lot of paperwork to be done. Firstly, Stoick had had to show his ID, and then he'd had to answer what felt like a thousand questions in a full-blown interrogation, and now he waited as the woman at the desk looked up everything she could find about him. It was like they expected to find some awful secret about him when in truth, he just wanted to satisfy Gobber, and look good in the eyes of Berk. Was that so much to ask?

Finally, the woman seemed satisfied, and Stoick and Gobber were led back to see the boy, and given permission to take him for a short while.

He was even skinnier than Stoick remembered, but his green eyes still sparkled and his copper strands of hair still stuck up every which way, as if he had never met a comb in his life. He smiled a little when he spotted Stoick, whom he must have recognized.

"Hiccup, this man wants to take you for a ride," the woman from behind the desk said in a bright voice. "Would that be okay with you?"

_Hiccup_? Stoick wondered to himself. What kind of name was _that_?

Hiccup's eyebrows shot up into his hair, his green eyes bugging out. "In the Thunderdrum?" he demanded, pointing to the window, where the sleek blue car was still parked. "Are you _kidding_ me?"

The tension Stoick had been feeling that afternoon evaporated as his campaign manager laughed, not even bothering to try and turn it into a cough.

"No." Stoick took over for his campaign manager, glaring a little at him. "No, we're not kidding you. I wanted to take you for a ride, and have a bit of a talk with you."

Hiccup's eyes sparkled all the more at these words, and it was clear that the woman behind the desk needn't have asked; it was clearly more than okay with him, provided he got to ride in the Thunderdrum.

Several of the other boys stared openly as Hiccup squeaked out a bit of a nervous 'yes', and quite a few were sending jealous glares. A little boy, maybe five or six, jumped up and down in excitement. "I knew somebody would want you one day, Hiccup!" He squealed, hugging the teen's legs. "I knew they would!"

Hiccup carefully pried the little boy away from him, and he must have guessed the direction of Stoick's thoughts, because he merely shrugged. "That's Gustav for you," he said, but there was no apology for the other's behavior in his tone; on the contrary, there was something closer to pride.

Stoick took the lead out to the car, and Hiccup was clearly ecstatic to be riding in something as nice as a Thunderdrum, so he seemed very awkward about actually getting inside. Gobber finally settled things by grabbing him and stuffing him roughly in one of the seats, buckling the small boy in the passenger side, taking the backseat for himself, as if giving Stoick and the boy a chance to talk.

"So…" Hiccup dragged out the word, deciding that he wanted to be the first to speak. "Not that I wasn't grateful or anything, what with you jerking me out of the oncoming lane and everything, but may I ask why I'm here?"

Stoick neatly maneuvered the car around into the other lane, keeping his eyes on the road as he replied. "There's footage of you nearly being hit by that car, and a lot of people saw me pull you out of the way."

"Um…okay." This didn't really answer Hiccup's question, but he felt slightly wary of asking too many. People had told him a million times that he was too inquisitive for his own good.

"You might know this, but I'm running for mayor. It would reflect well on my election if we were seen more together. My popularity hit an all-time high once word leaked out about you. The more we're seen together, the better it looks for my election."

There was silence, and Stoick glanced at Hiccup quickly to see him staring down at his lap. For once, not even Gobber tried to speak to break the silence.

"It's settled then," Hiccup announced at last. "When I'm old enough to drive, I think this is the kind of car I want. It's amazing."


	3. Chapter 3

**_Hard Knocks _**

**A/N: ****SURPRISE**

**Yes, this is the surprise. Updating all of my eighteen in-progress fics at once. It was pretty crazy, but I did it, and it's here, and good day to you all! I had tons of fun doing this, so I hope you guys have tons of fun reading this!**

**On that note, I'm not sure how in-character or accurate this chapter is. I'm pulling everything about orphanages and politics out of my rear, remember, so please be kind. Plus, also, I really love Hiccup's nickname for Stoick xD and I changed Stoick's last name from 'Haddock' to 'Maddox' because Maddox sounds like it and is also less...weird xD **

* * *

To Hiccup's surprise, though he didn't voice it, they didn't just drop in the drive-through of a fast-food place; Wonder Beard drove to a part of town that the teen had never seen before, although he noticed that everything here was much cleaner.

"Is this where you live?" The question tumbled off his lips before he could stop it, tearing his eyes away from the view outside his window to look at Wonder Beard.

The man nodded. "Have you ever been here?"

"No, never," Hiccup shook his head, and Wonder Beard twisted the steering wheel slightly, turning down into the parking lot of a very rich-looking sit-down restaurant.

Hiccup privately thought that it was the type of place an old and crabby woman might go on her Friday nights spent away from Bingo, but he chose not to voice this thought as Wonder Beard cut the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle.

The blonde man climbed out of the backseat and Hiccup gave him a small smile as he slid out, too.

Once they had entered the building, the impression of an elderly lady's kind of place quickly vanished. Dim red lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting a crimson glow over the dark oak walls. The tables were highly polished, and the ding of the bell above the door echoed noticeably in the thick silence. Everybody was chewing quietly, and there was the clink of cutlery on porcelain, but nobody spoke, as though it were a library or a church.

Wonder Beard quietly spoke to a dark-haired woman bearing a black apron with the restaurant's crest, and she led them over to a table for two.

"There's only two chairs," Hiccup commented in surprise, as Wonder Beard indicated for him to take one. He obediently sat, but looked to the blonde man. "Where are you going to be sitting?"

"I think it'd be, er…best to let you two alone," the blonde replied awkwardly, and he refused to meet the boy's eyes, even when Hiccup gave him a curious look.

"So, what do you have to do with him anyway?" Hiccup gestured as the blonde man wandered off into the crowd, towards another table. "Is he your friend, or…?"

"Gobber's my friend, and my campaign manager." Wonder Beard responded shortly, as a waitress walked by and set menus down in front of each of them. "Why?"

"Oh…" Hiccup nodded in dawning comprehension. "I get it. He can't be seen with us, because then that would look _too_ set up, right?"

Stoick wasn't exactly sure he liked the tone Hiccup took, but he dismissed this. "I wouldn't call this set up—

"Well, I mean, you're doing this to look good, nothing else, right? This is set up. There's nothing wrong with that."

As he spoke, his voice audible in the silence of the other customers, people began glancing around at the table, registering that Stoick the Vast was sitting with the young orphan he had saved last week.

Several customers actually stood from their tables and walked past Stoick's several times, as if hoping to hear an interesting bit of conversation.

Hiccup regarded this with amusement dancing in his green eyes. "Wow," he remarked. "If this is what happens when you take me out to lunch…if I moved in with you, you'd probably become _President_."

Wonder Beard's lips twitched at the comment, but he hid this by pretending to be reading the menu. Unsure what to do with himself in such an upscale place, Hiccup picked up his own menu and scanned it with his eyes.

"Ready to order?" the waitress was back, a yellow legal pad balanced on a plastic tray in one hand and a pen in the other.

Wonder Beard nodded and murmured his order in a low voice, but Hiccup didn't catch it. When the waitress turned to him, however, he peeked down at the menu he held and blurted out the first dish he saw. "Grilled halibut with cilantro butter."

For some reason, this made Wonder Beard's lips twitch again; perhaps he had noticed Hiccup's quick glance downward, and guessed what he was doing.

"And what would you like for the drink?"

"Water," Wonder Beard replied.

"Do you guys sell Coke?"

The waitress nodded.

"Alright, then…Coke." It was hard for Hiccup to speak with as much authority as the man across from him; he wasn't used to ordering people about, unless you counted those rare times when he asked Gustav for a favor. And even then, it wasn't a demand; it was a request.

As the waitress smiled at them and walked away with a promise of being right back, the teenager allowed his eyes to roam the building again. "This is a nice place, you know. D'you come here a lot?"

Wonder Beard shrugged. "When I can."

"This is the nicest place I'll ever be in, that's for sure." Hiccup slumped down in his seat a bit, a glaring contrast to the rest of the customers, all sitting up as straight as if they had steel rods for spinal cords.

The man tore his eyes away from the others in the restaurant to focus on the boy in front of him. "You seem very certain of that." Privately, he wondered how much longer they could carry on with the small talk.

Hiccup shrugged indifferently. "I think it's pretty clear I'm never getting adopted. I mean, every time somebody comes into the orphanage, they just pass right over me. Except for you, of course, Wonder Beard, and you're bringing me back afterward."

Stoick blinked at the teen for a second, unsure how to respond to the not-so-affectionate nickname. "Wonder Beard?"

Hiccup, realizing what he had said, blushed scarlet, but met Stoick's eye. "Well, then what _is_ your name?"

"Maddox. Stoick Maddox. But you can continue with your charming nickname." To Hiccup's intense surprise, the man seemed to have decided that he found the whole thing amusing; he was actually smiling, and seemed to be fighting back a laugh.

Relieved that Mr. Maddox was taking things so well, Hiccup gave a quiet sigh of relief. "Right. Sorry, Wond—sir."

The waitress appeared beside their table again, holding a tray with two glasses upon it. "Here are your drinks," she chirped cheerfully as she set the tray down upon the table's edge and passed the glass of ice water to Stoick, and the glass of brown liquid to Hiccup.

"I'll be back with the food shortly," she assured them before disappearing for the second time within the hustle and bustle of the kitchens.

Hiccup picked up one of the napkins from the middle of the gleaming wooden table, folding it over and over until it formed a rather shapeless, crumpled ball of white. "I've never understood napkins," he confided to Stoick, unraveling the ball once more. "Why would we wipe our mouths on napkins when that's practically what sleeves are for?" As if to emphasize this point, Hiccup dropped the napkin and began playing with his jacket sleeve.

Taking an actual, long look at him, Stoick realized that his jacket was much too large for him, draping like a cloak over his tiny shoulders. Yet even though he'd just joked about wiping his mouth on his sleeves, the man couldn't help but notice that the overlarge jacket looked almost brand-new, though weather-beaten.

"I thought orphanages were supposed to keep the kids in well-fitting clothes," Stoick remarked before thinking. "Why do you wear such a huge jacket?"

Hiccup raised his gaze to the man's for a moment, and then dropped it again, back to his jacket. He took a long moment to speak, and in the silence, Stoick knew that he had overstepped. "I wasn't brought in to the orphanage in a blanket, like most babies. The headmistress said that she looked too poor to even afford a blanket in that time. Called her a Molly Weasley lookalike." He plucked a piece of lint from the brown sleeve. "I was brought in wrapped in this jacket. It's the only thing I have that came from my mother."

The story shouldn't have surprised Stoick, but it did. His eyebrows flew up on his forehead, and before really thinking it through, he blurted, "What, do you want to find your birth parents or something?"

Hiccup nodded slowly, pulling a knee up to his chest and resting his chin on his kneecap. "I want it more than anything else in the world."


	4. Chapter 4

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: I don't even have the energy to give you guys an apology right now, though I know I owe you one. Can I interest you in the next chapter, and the promise of the fifth soon, instead? I really wanted to discontinue this fic guys. Please don't leave spoilers about the movie in the review section, as I haven't seen it, and have no wish to until I've completed this fic. I don't want this fic to be influenced by canon, so I'm waiting to see canon until this is over. Good day. **

* * *

Hiccup wished he could take back the words the instant he spoke them. He already looked pathetic enough, awkward and out-of-place as he was in such an upscale restaurant, and to make matters worse, now he was getting weepy about an old jacket and his lost mother, in front of Wonder Beard, of all people. Why was he being so honest with this man, somebody he barely knew? It wasn't going to get him anywhere – Stoick was still going to dump him back in the orphanage once they were done here, and he'd be forgotten again, as left behind and unwanted as he always was.

Hiccup cleared his throat, deciding that a change of subject was in order. "So, what's my part in all of this?" He reluctantly lifted his head to meet Stoick's gaze, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the man did not look pitying. Pity was the last thing he wanted, or needed.

"What do you mean?" Stoick questioned, picking up the straw the waitress had offered him for his water glass. He didn't put it in the glass; he just kept twirling it around in his fingers, over and over, as he talked.

"I mean, do I need to do anything to sell the idea to the public, or do I just sit here and look pretty?" Hiccup clasped his hands, and placed his chin on top of them, resting his elbows on the highly polished table. "Because so far, that's really all I've done."

"Oh." Stoick relaxed visibly, although Hiccup couldn't figure out why. "No. No work is involved, at least not on your part. Gobber and I will handle everything."

Hiccup nodded, a silence descending on the pair. It was quickly broken, however, by the waitress arriving with their food balanced precariously on one large tray, setting both plates down in front of them. When Hiccup glimpsed Stoick's food, he instantly understood why the man had smiled when he'd ordered: he hadn't seen Hiccup glance down at the menu – it was just that they'd both ordered the same thing, although Hiccup's was an accident.

He picked up his fork as Stoick quietly thanked the waitress, stabbing absently at the fish on his plate, cutting it slowly in half, and then in fourths. It wasn't just the fact that they'd ordered the same thing that must have amused Wonder Beard: it was the fact that the food on the plate looked simply too big for someone like Hiccup to eat in one sitting. He impaled a piece of fish on his fork and ate it off the cutlery, allowing his eyes to roam the room as he chewed. The place had its own sort of charm, he supposed, but everything here was just too flashy, too showy, for his liking. He didn't trust flashy things.

However, this distrust flew right out the window the instant he registered the source of the taste in his mouth. Holy cow, where had this been all his life? Hiccup vigorously attacked another piece, looking down at the huge plate again, noting how much food there was, and wondering if he _could_ manage to eat it all in one sitting.

_Challenge accepted, _he told himself, taking another bite.

Stoick, however, interrupted his train of thought with his own. "All you really have to do is be seen with me a few times, to give the public the idea that…" For some reason, the man broke off there, and returned his gaze to the table.

Hiccup finished the sentence in his head. _That you care about me. _He picked up his fork again, stabbing at the fish like it had personally offended him. Even if he didn't want to be adopted, there was a very noticeable line between being adopted and being _wanted_. He straightened up in his seat, bit the piece of fish off the fork, and chewed and swallowed it before speaking. "Right. Got it."

Hiccup had clearly never had lessons in the art of table manners. He rested an elbow on the table until he noticed the look Stoick was giving him, and he reluctantly slid off, trying to sit up a little straighter in his chair. He picked up his fork again, cut himself a piece of fish, and proceeded to eat the rest of his meal as though he were pretending to be a starving wolf.

Stoick chose not to say anything, instead focusing on his own plate.

Though people were still looking over at their table, and talk seemed to have increased since they noticed who had entered, they were no longer walking in front of the table now just to get a good look at what, exactly, was going on. Hiccup pretended not to notice this, as it was making him slightly uncomfortable. Whenever people looked at him, they rarely ever had anything good to say about him afterward. He swallowed his bite of fish, pushing his plate away, even though he had only eaten one third of the meal._ Challenge accepted, but not completed._

When the two had finished eating, Hiccup started for Gobber's table, where the man appeared to be trying to eat his way through the menu, but Stoick stopped him. "Gobber's got his own transportation, he'll be fine."

Hiccup accepted the information with a nod, but almost immediately it became clear that Gobber's absence was going to be a problem. The silence in the car was very loud, and very awkward. Hiccup began fidgeting with the sleeve of his jacket, the sound of heat blowing through the vents deafening to his ears.

Stoick seemed to notice the awkwardness as well, for after a full minute of complete silence as they stared at a red stoplight, waiting for it to change to green, the man cleared his throat. "So…what do you like to do for fun?"

It was such a weak attempt at small talk that Hiccup honestly wondered why this man was going for mayor. If that job included talking to people, it appeared that Stoick would be at a loss. Nevertheless, he was trying to kill time and make friendly conversation, so Hiccup shrugged in response. "I, uh…I draw…a little…sometimes. Looking after Gustav is pretty much a full-time job, so…doesn't leave much spare time, except at night after he's gone to bed."

"Gustav?" Stoick sounded puzzled.

Hiccup picked at the fraying hole in the knee of his grass-stained jeans. To think, a split second of terror in the middle of the icy street, and here he was, sitting beside the very man who'd saved him. It was bizarre. "He needs someone to look after him, he's the youngest."

"And…you're the oldest?" It wasn't surprising that Stoick looked a little confused at this; the kid, though he claimed to be thirteen, looked like he might have just turned ten.

"Oh…no. I'm not. I'm actually one of the younger ones, to be honest, but everybody else gets adopted so fast…Gustav needs some stability in his life, and since I'm not ever getting adopted…" Hiccup trailed off with a sigh, allowing his gaze to drift to the window before picking his story back up. "…I'm the best one for the job."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Stoick wanted to address Hiccup's wistful tone when he spoke of being adopted, but he decided to focus on a less sensitive subject. "I mean, if you do ever get adopted, Gustav would—

"That's not going to happen," Hiccup interrupted. "Trust me, Mr. Maddox, I've been here for thirteen years. Nobody is going to want me. Ever."

Stoick couldn't think of a good response to that, but luckily the orphanage was within sight now, and he pulled the Thunderdrum into the nearest available parking space.

Hiccup unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his passenger-side door, but Stoick made him slow down until they could both go in together, as he wasn't sure what the protocol was for bringing a child back to the orphanage. Once he had seen Hiccup safely through the door, he turned to leave, only to hear a commotion as Hiccup entered the next room. The little boy, Gustav, appeared disappointed upon seeing him again. "You weren't adopted?"

He didn't hear Hiccup's response, because he was already halfway out the door.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hey, look at me! I got this up in 33 days! Woo-hoo for me. :D Even though I was away for those 33 days. Sorry about that. Anyway, we are reaching a better place with this story because Stoick's emotional constipation is over. It's seriously really hard to write him in this fic like omg. How do I know what a tough Viking man thinks and feels D: Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter! And for those people who asked if I'm going to finish this fic - yes. I will try my best to make it good, but I promise I WILL finish it, good or not.  
**

* * *

"So, what happened, Hiccup?"

"Yeah, what happened?"

"We should have known _Hiccup _wouldn't even last a day in his new home."

"Yeah, no kidding."

The questions and barbed comments flew around the boy at such a rapid rate that Hiccup scarcely knew what to say first. He drew in several deep breaths, deciding to answer the easiest question there. "Nothing really happened," he jammed his hands in the pocket of the oversized brown jacket, struggling not to look and meet Gustav's surely disappointed eyes. "He just wanted to talk to me. He took me out to lunch, but that's about it."

"Somewhere upscale, I bet," one of the other boys chipped in, his mouth twisting like _upscale_ was a bad word. "If he drives a Thunderdrum, he can probably afford to treat somebody to a nice meal. Do you think he'll be back, Hiccup?"

"I…I don't…yes, he…he said he would be." Hiccup kept stuttering, feeling more than a little overwhelmed due to all the questions.

"But I don't get it," Gustav said in frustration. "Why did he come and take you if he didn't want to _adopt_ you?" He stared up at Hiccup in curiosity and sadness, blinking those huge, dark eyes of his.

Hiccup knelt down to the boy's level, effectively shutting out the other boys, who instantly started cooking up their own theories. He heard one comment about facial hair, and wondered if 'Wonder Beard' was going to be the first of many creative nicknames.

He met the younger boy's sad, confused gaze, gave a small sigh and started to explain. So many of the other boys automatically assumed that just because Gustav was little, he was also too young to understand anything "important", as they called it, but this wasn't true. Gustav was a smart little thing, wise beyond his years in some cases, even, and he surprised Hiccup with how much he could understand. So the older boy tried his best to put everything that had happened that afternoon into words. "You remember a couple days ago, when I took you out, and we started that race to the pawn shop two streets over, right?"

Gustav broke into a grin. "Yeah, the pawn shop race! When are we going to do that again?"

Hiccup ignored the question, as he felt certain that the pawn shop race would have been further proof to any watching adult that he was unfit to look after Gustav, and he felt a pang in his heart just thinking about being replaced in the little boy's life. "Well, I ran out into the street—

"But you're always telling me not to!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, bud. It was my fault, I wasn't being responsible, and I nearly got hit by a car. I would have, too, if that man hadn't been there. The man who came to the orphanage today saved my life by grabbing me off the street."

"Whoa," Gustav looked awed. "Is that why he came back? To tell _you_ to quit running in the streets?"

Hiccup couldn't help the small laugh that bubbled up inside him, escaping his lips, but it quickly ceased when he thought over the boy's sentence. Gustav's innocence wouldn't always last. The real world didn't take kindly to innocent people, no matter how young they were. "No," he shook his head slowly, deciding on the spot to leave out the part about being mayor. Despite Gustav's intelligence, there were still certain things he didn't understand, and politics was definitely one of them. "Saving me made him look good to the town, and he took me out to lunch to…to milk that." _To give people the impression he cares about me._

Gustav's nose wrinkled. "Is that why he saved you? Because he wanted to look good?"

"No." Hiccup spoke so quickly, the word out in the space of a heartbeat, quicker than an ordinary person could draw breath. His defense of the man was so hasty that it scared him. "No, he…he didn't do it for that. I guess he saved me…" he shrugged, unsure how to continue his own sentence. Why had the man saved him? "…Because he has a good heart."

"So, he's nice?" Gustav looked uncertain now, as if he couldn't decide for himself and needed Hiccup to explain it to him more.

"I think so." Hiccup rose to his full height again, pins and needles jabbing at his aching legs, from crouching for so long. "I just don't think he knows it yet."

* * *

_Note to self: small talk can be brutal when you two barely know each other._

This was a note to self that Hiccup would forever remember after spending his second day in Stoick's presence, this one both more enjoyable and more awkward than the last. Instead of lunch, they'd simply gone out walking on city sidewalks, the man's powerful stride completely eclipsing the boy's tiny steps, barely noticeable.

Hiccup did have to admire the man's effort to avoid conversation, but when their awkward silence was punctuated by the excited, easy chatter of people all around them as they pounded the Ohio streets, they both felt they could ignore each other no longer. Thus, the small talk started.

First, there were the general questions that made Hiccup cringe. "What's your favorite color?" (Brown for Hiccup, red for Stoick) "What's your favorite season?" (Autumn for Hiccup – not too cold, not too hot, and everything was so pretty when the leaves turned red and fell – and winter for Stoick.)

The man was just making another brave attempt at keeping the conversation going – by the sound of it, he was about to ask about music – when Hiccup saw it.

As a general rule, he wasn't a person to get attached to places. He knew everywhere he went was only temporary, and the only constant in his life was the depressing orphanage and saying goodbye to the other boys, but one look at that little unnoticed corner shop with its plain beige walls and coffee smells, he was, for lack of a better word, smitten. He was ready to charge ahead, so used to walking the streets alone or with Gustav, but then he remembered his companion was more or less in charge of this outing, so he turned instead to Stoick. "Look, there's a bookstore! Can we go inside, Mr. Maddox?"

The use of his surname must have surprised the man, because he looked a little bemused, but he allowed their entrance, stepping inside the warm shop. Hiccup drew a deep breath through the nose, silently loving the smells and the sounds, the faint ringing of the bell above their heads as they walked into the shop. The interior of the store was also a welcome relief from the bitter cold outside.

Seemingly too excited to think of the man with him anymore, the boy charged on ahead, picking up books Stoick had never even heard of and flicking through them, reading the backs, and carefully placing them back on the shelf, handling them with more care than he seemed capable of.

"You like to read, huh?" Stoick was apparently still riding the small talk train, chugging a determined track down the railroad of awkwardness.

"I love it," Hiccup replied, in a state of complete ecstasy, picking up yet another book and actually opening it this time, reading the first few pages before setting it back down. He gave a small noise, presumably of delight, when he found a small, unremarkable paperback on the shelf, opening this one too and beginning to peruse it.

"What's up?" Stoick hadn't noticed these reactions, having drifted away to look at a few different volumes himself. Now that he looked, however, he saw Hiccup running his long, skinny fingers along a thin paperback, a joyful look on his face. "You like that one, then?" Stoick had heard of this author, but he couldn't recall ever reading anything by them.

"Yes," Hiccup nodded enthusiastically, glancing up at the man standing beside him. "It's my favorite book." He put it back on the shelf, but as he walked away, Stoick looked at it again, for a moment wondering why he didn't just buy it before realizing what a stupid thought that was. Of course Hiccup couldn't buy luxuries like books, if he couldn't even afford proper winter clothing for himself. Stoick picked up the volume again, examining it, until one of Hiccup's little noises alerted him to another treasured book he'd found.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: Alright, alright, this chapter might suck because I wrote it in two parts - like I took a break in between writing the beginning and the end - and so it might suck. I thought about rewriting from scratch, but meh. I was lazy. So, the chapter's a little short, but we should be getting to longer chapters now. AND STOICK ACTUALLY FEELS THINGS NOW WOO :D am I the only one excited about this? I mean, I get that he didn't technically "feel" anything until this chapter because you know, he didn't have any opinion nor feeling toward Hiccup, so he wouldn't be feeling all these things, but it was still really fun to write his opinions and stuff now. It lets me explore his character a little more. It was fun. Anyway, good day! Please review? **

* * *

It was a habit, Hiccup supposed, to automatically glance around wherever he went, eyes scanning everybody in the stores and on the streets as if, even out in the open, he was still searching for his mother. This was how he used to search for her when he was little, just observing people in shops and sidewalks, hoping that one day he might run across her on his way to or from the orphanage.

As you can imagine, this wasn't a very efficient method for finding people you'd never met before. As he grew older, Hiccup had abandoned the idea that he'd simply run into her on the street somewhere, but it was still common for him to enter a store and immediately glance around at the people, studying them, taking note of them, and silently wondering if any one of them knew where his mother was now.

This was why, even in the bookstore, where the shelves alone could hold his attention for hours, he kept glancing up at the people in the store, watching them pay for their purchases, watching them browse the shelves, picking up books and reading them. When he turned his attention back to the books, he ran a finger longingly down the spine of one, plucking it off the shelf and beginning to peruse before remembering his companion, and lowering it to see what the man was doing. Stoick didn't seem like the type who'd be easily interested in a bookstore, but when he glanced over, he realized the man was still standing by the door, flicking through a rack of paperbacks with a very confused look on his face.

Hiccup went back to his own book again.

* * *

There was an immediately noticeable and striking difference between the walk from the orphanage, and the walk back. Silence still reigned over the walking pair, but instead of being almost aggressively loud and awkward, it felt companionable, and neither Hiccup nor Stoick felt the need to break it.

Cold wind swirled around them as the sky began slowly turning purple, and Hiccup shivered slightly, wrapping his arms around himself, trying to lock in any leftover heat from the bookstore.

Stoick eyed him for a moment, but the boy gave no complaint about the temperature, so he decided to ask. "Are you…are you cold?"

"Ah, no," Hiccup replied easily, kicking up a bit of snow with his dirty sneaker as he talked. "I just regularly convulse like this all the time, especially when surrounded by snow and ice. It's quite a common condition actually, have you—

"Alright, alright," an agitated Stoick cut in. "I get the picture, there's no need to be so sarcastic about it."

Hiccup grinned, clearly very at ease, but the grin immediately vanished at Stoick's next words. "Do you want a jacket or something, I…" he reached to pull his own off, but stopped when he realized that Hiccup was shaking his head.

"No, no, that's okay – we're almost there anyway, I won't be in the cold much longer." As if to prove his point, Hiccup quickened his pace, outdistancing the man and practically disappearing from sight. Stoick squinted against the glare of the dying winter sun, just barely making out Hiccup's skinny figure, far ahead of him, about to turn a corner. The boy may have been small, but he sure could move fast, Stoick thought to himself, hurrying to catch up.

In short, when they arrived back at the orphanage, both the man and the boy were slightly out of breath, though the running had done Hiccup some good, for he barely noticed the cold until he entered the orphanage again, only slightly warmer than the frigid, icy street outside.

"So, are we doing anything tomorrow?" Hiccup raised his eyebrows, practically following Stoick back out of the orphanage like an obedient puppy, smoothing down his flyaway auburn hair as he talked.

"I, uh, I didn't have any plans," Stoick admitted, cocking an eyebrow when Hiccup looked almost…disappointed. Weird for a kid who hadn't even seemed to enjoy the outing until they'd hit the bookstore. "Why? Did you want to drag me somewhere else?" he added, only half-teasing.

Hiccup flushed. "No," he responded after a long minute. "I was just curious. Getting you more votes is a hard job, you know." He put a hand on his forehead in mock exhaustion.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you're so underappreciated and all that."

"You have no idea."

Stoick chuckled, giving his head a little shake. It had been a long time since there had been somebody like this in his life, somebody who seemed to radiate pure joy and boundless energy, constantly laughing and dancing from subject to subject, completely unable to stay in one place or stick to any one thing. It had been a long time since he'd known somebody whose happiness was utterly infectious.

He glanced around at the shops lining the twilit street as he himself headed home, his breath coming out in a misty puff of air. It had been a long time since he had simply stopped to admire the city, all lit up with neon signs and streetlights, so bright even in the dusk that his eyes were instantly drawn to the darkest, least noticeable store, that tiny bookstore that Hiccup had been so enthusiastic about. Stoick had lived in this city his whole life, and he didn't think he'd ever gone into that bookstore before today. In fact, this whole street looked unfamiliar to him in the dusky darkness.

On an impulse, he pushed open the door to the bookstore again, allowing the first blast of heat to hit him, telling himself he wasn't actually coming in here to do anything, except perhaps warm up. Almost as if he'd planned it all along, however, he strode up to the rack in front, eyes scanning the book covers. It was a positive jumble of different volumes, as if the bookstore was still working on organizing half the store, and had dumped that half the store on a shelf and pushed it up to the door to urge people to buy stuff from it.

There was the paperback that Hiccup had gotten so excited about, the book he'd called his favorite. Stoick picked it up again, examining it, lifting the cover, edging farther away from the rack as he read the first page, picturing Hiccup himself reading it in his mind's eye, smiling at the happy parts and becoming more subdued at the upsetting ones. He closed the book again, but he didn't put it back on the shelf. He kept turning it over and over in his hands, looking out the glass front doors at the snow covering the scene outside. It was falling thickly now, and if he didn't get going soon, he might find himself half-buried in thick white powder by the time he reached his house.

He walked up to the counter before he could change his mind. "I'd like to buy this book, please."


	7. Chapter 7

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Alright, seventh chapter! :D You like? You hate? Special thanks toooo SharKohen for the idea at the end, even though nothing really came of it. And of course, thanks to all my reviewers. You guys make trudging through this story worth it :D **

* * *

If it had been a long time since Stoick had had somebody like Hiccup in his life, it had been even longer since he'd had someone to give things to, and it felt like it had been an eternity to him. Thus, he was immediately faced by two big problems, and he remained unsure of what exactly to do about them.

For one, there was the book itself. What did he do with it, before he gave it to Hiccup? Did he wrap it? Did he leave it in the bag? Did he take it out? Gifts were supposed to be wrapped, he decided, and he would have continued on with this protocol, except he discovered that he had no wrapping paper in the house. So he left the book in the bag, but this was no good, for without wrapping paper to stop him, he kept taking it out of the bag and examining it, not reading it exactly, but more trying to envision Hiccup's reaction. He hoped that it would at least make him happy…he turned the book over again, looking at the back. Maybe he should wait until he had some wrapping paper to actually give it to Hiccup.

And of course, this thought raised more problems, made him think maybe he should return the book. It was odd for him to be buying books for this kid…their companionship had been so simple and clear at the start, and he'd been planning for it to be short-lived. Their interactions didn't actually matter, so long as people saw them. But he didn't want people to see him giving Hiccup the book. It made him uncomfortable just thinking about it. And what would Gobber say? Would Gobber think it was weird for him to be buying a present for this kid when they were going to part ways soon?

He hesitated, looking down at the book again, fingering the cover. He really should return it – it wasn't right for him to be giving this kid gifts when—

It was just a book, he reasoned with himself. It wasn't like he was actually planning on sticking around after all was said and done. It wasn't like, by giving Hiccup this book, he was making any promises to him. The kid may have been flighty, but he was sharp. Sharp enough to see that this was all going to end soon. Yes, very soon. Stoick would give him the book. Hiccup wasn't stupid. He knew what was going to happen, after the election was over.

It was just a book. Nothing could go wrong.

* * *

Stoick thought he might be overthinking this. Just maybe. He didn't know why his nervous brain decided to address every single issue with giving Hiccup the book, and why it decided to review everything that could possibly go wrong, but he didn't like it. He wondered if maybe he should give Hiccup the book anonymously, but figured that would do no good, and also possibly come across as creepy. He decided the best way to go about it was to leave the book on the passenger seat on the drive over to the orphanage, and wait for Hiccup to notice it himself.

It was with relief that he finally arrived at the orphanage, for this meant he could at least stop analyzing every single factor of a stupid present that he was starting to wish he had never bought in the first place. But whenever he considered just hiding it under his seat and returning the book later, an image of Hiccup in the bookstore, fingering the cover longingly, filled his head, reminding him why he'd chosen to buy it in the first place. If he bought the kid anything else, though, it would definitely be winter clothes, he thought as the boy himself appeared before Stoick, bouncing around excitedly and rushing to the car, nearly beating Stoick there.

Stoick went to get in the driver's side a little faster than he normally would have, focusing solely on buckling his seatbelt to avoid looking at Hiccup's face, refusing to allow himself to gauge the reaction.

Hiccup, however, didn't even look at the book. He picked it up off his seat only to instantly settle himself back down and buckle his seatbelt one-handed, giving Stoick a salute. "Where to, Captain?"

Stoick frowned. "We're not on a ship, you know." He was dying to tell Hiccup to glance at the cover already, but the kid seemed determined not to. He gave a small chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Gustav was in a pirate mood this morning. Sorry 'bout that." He finally seemed to remember he still held the book, because he glanced down at it. Stoick looked quickly at him, trying to see if he was smiling or not before shifting his eyes back to the road.

"Oh, cool! You bought it?" Hiccup sounded excited, at least. "That's so awesome, what part are you at?"

Stoick frowned, turning the wheel slightly, his mind half on the conversation and half on driving. "What are you talking about?"

"You…you bought it to read, right?"

For God's sake, why did everything have to be so difficult with this kid?

"No," Stoick finally managed; this time he found it quite easy to keep his eyes fixed on the road. He couldn't have looked at Hiccup if he'd tried. "I…I bought it as a gift for you, actually."

"Oh!" Hiccup didn't sound happy, just surprised. Out of the corner of his eye, Stoick saw him looking pointedly away, fiddling with his jacket zipper.

"Did…did I get the wrong book?" Stoick ventured uncertainly. He was fairly certain he hadn't, but if he had, then maybe that's why Hiccup didn't look so excited.

"No." Hiccup shook his head, looking down at the book again. He still held it in his hands, his grip on it white-knuckled. "No, no, you…you got the right book."

"Well…do you like it?" Stoick felt quite helpless now; Hiccup had wanted it so badly. Why wasn't he happy?

"Y-yeah," Hiccup nodded, still playing with his jacket. He didn't seem to want to look at Stoick. "I mean, yes. Thank you very much for the book."

Stoick kept his eyes fixed on the road, but he could feel his heart sinking. He worked to keep his emotions out of his voice, off his face. "What's wrong, then?"

It took a long time for Hiccup to answer, and Stoick assumed he wasn't going to at all. Finally, he set the book down and fixed Stoick with a searching look. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"This. I mean, I get interacting with me for the sake of your political career – but why are you buying this for me?"

This was the question that Stoick had asked himself over and over, and he'd hoped that Hiccup wouldn't ask him it, too. He almost wanted to respond with more talk about his political career, but he held back. Something made him stop, made him think before he spoke again.

"Well," he replied at last, choosing his words very carefully. "You really wanted the book, and you didn't buy it for yourself. I thought maybe…I thought you might like a present."

"Oh," Hiccup said again.

There was silence.

"Well?" Stoick demanded at last, unable to stand another non-answer. "Did you like it, or not?"

"Yes." Hiccup still wouldn't look at Stoick, but that was okay, because now he sounded happy. Disbelieving, but happy, and that was really all Stoick had been aiming for. When Hiccup did finally lift his head, Stoick turned to look at him quickly, trying to take in everything about him at once. He was smiling, smiling so hard that his cheeks must have hurt. Smiling so hard that it looked like it might break his face if it grew any larger. He looked so happy that Stoick felt his heart lift, the weight of the book rolling off his shoulders. Who cared what Gobber said? He asked himself, turning down another street. Really, Gobber had no reason to complain about this. If anybody did happen to hear of this, it wouldn't matter. All he'd done was give Hiccup a book.

"So," Hiccup cleared his throat, dropping his gaze, his grin fading slowly, "where to?"

"What, no 'captain' this time?" Stoick teased, feeling ten times better now than he had on the drive over.

Hiccup blushed, and Stoick took advantage of his silence to forge on ahead. "Actually, I thought you could pick the place this time. I didn't really know where to go, and I thought maybe you might have some ideas."

"Oh, wow, way to put me on the spot," Hiccup told him, but he smiled all the same. "Um…the…the park?"

"It's December," Stoick pointed out flatly. "Everything is covered in snow, the swings are chipped with ice—

"Okay, okay, you know what, if you didn't want my ideas, why did you ask?" Hiccup huffed, then started considering again. "Ghost tour?"

"What part of Ohio does ghost tours at this time of year?"

"Alright, well, if you're going to scorn all my ideas, I'm not sure I'm going to share them with you anymore," Hiccup said, glancing out the window for inspiration. "Yard sale?"

Stoick cut his gaze to the boy. "Are you serious right now?"

"Well, okay, then. How about a scavenger hunt?"

Stoick rolled his eyes. "I'm not Gustav."

"You don't have to be a kid to have fun, you know," Hiccup pointed out. "C'mon. We can park the car somewhere nearby, and then we can give each other lists of things to search for. Like, you know, litter."

"You shouldn't pick up somebody else's trash."

"One man's trash is another man's treasure," Hiccup quoted promptly, looking smug.

"No, I'm vetoing the scavenger hunt."

"You vetoed everything else!"

"Alright, alright, I'll go with one of the next things you suggest, okay?"

"Dumpster diving!"

"Veto!"

"That is so not fair!"


	8. Chapter 8

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hi! I'm back again. With a new chapter xD It's almost two thousand words, and it's almost five pages! :D But yeah, Astrid probably won't appear again, unless she's a supporting character. This is pretty much a father/son fic, so no Hiccstrid or anything, just little hints of canon ships sprinkled vigorously throughout.**

* * *

"How do I get myself into these things?" Stoick muttered grumpily to himself, surveying the packed mall, crowded with eager Christmas shoppers. In the midst of the chaos, he stood with Hiccup. The boy looked supremely relaxed in the claustrophobic confines, barely batting an eye when people bumped into him.

When the break in the sea of people came, Hiccup darted forward quite suddenly and unexpectedly, tugging Stoick along into – the candle store? He frowned in confusion, allowing the boy to tug him along, looking at the rows and rows of glass jars filled with wax.

"So, I haven't told you what we'll be doing, right?" Hiccup stood in the center of the remarkably tiny store as he talked, running his fingers along several glass jars.

"No," Stoick grunted. Hiccup had refrained from explaining the point of going to the mall for fear that Stoick would attempt to use a veto, and as he had said on the drive over, the man's vetoing abilities were temporarily revoked.

"Alright, well – basically, we're going to have a disgusting candle competition."

"A what?"

"A disgusting candle competition. We look for a candle with the most disgusting smell, and whoever finds the worst smell wins. The person who loses has to take the candle home with them."

"I do not want to do this."

"Oh, c'mon, it'll be fun! Except if I lose, you're gonna have to cover me on the candle. I'm broke." He gestured to himself as he talked, already beginning to wander around, picking up jars at random and reading the labels.

"Why do we want to assault our nostrils with something that smells bad?" Stoick demanded, trailing behind the boy.

"Because it's fun. And your veto abilities are revoked, like I said, and you can't veto anything I say for the time being – I decide when the revocation period is up."

"How is that fair?"

"Don't worry, I'll give it back to you at the end of the day. Here. Smell this one." The flowery label made it seem like it would smell good, but judging by the mischievous grin on the kid's face, it didn't.

"Hiccup—

"C'monnnnn," he dragged the word out in obvious impatience. "If you don't start looking soon anyway, I'll win by default and you'll have to take this one home."

"I don't want a candle!"

"That's the beauty of it – you have to take it, whether or not you want it."

It was clear that Hiccup was not going to back down until he got his way, so Stoick reluctantly took the candle from him and took a quick sniff. It was possibly the worst thing he had ever smelled in his life.

The expression on his face must have been highly amusing, because Hiccup burst into a great peal of laughter that not only continued on for several minutes, but also attracted the attention of the other shoppers, particularly a sour-looking old lady who smelled like a candle store herself.

"Hiccup." Stoick poked the boy in the ribs, trying to discreetly snap him out of it, but he was too far gone, and continued to snort for several long minutes until he finally managed to compose himself.

"Hiccup, people are staring," the man pointed out as quietly as he could, his face very red.

Hiccup glanced up at him, tilting his head in curiosity. "So? That's what you wanted, right? For them to stare? For them to notice us?"

His words momentarily robbed Stoick of speech, but he didn't even notice – he had already turned his attention back to the candles, picking up several and sniffing them. "Oh, this one smells _terrible_!"

Hiccup's exclamation earned him a glare from the stern-looking woman behind the counter, but he just shrugged his shoulders, the ever-present grin still on his face as he began sifting through them. "I think I possibly picked the best store in the world to host this competition in," he confided in the still silent Stoick. "These candles are absolutely awful."

"Hiccup." Stoick nudged him to get him to shut up.

"I'm serious!" He picked up a bright blue candle, pulling out the stopper as he talked. "These candles are quite possibly the worst in the world." He stopped speaking to lean over and take a sniff, and almost immediately broke into a coughing fit.

Stoick hovered above him anxiously, pounding him on the back to help him expel the irritation in his throat, but unsure what else to do in terms of helping. Hiccup finally raised his head, pushing Stoick's hand away, and smiled through watering eyes. "_Island Breeze_? More like _Asthma Attack_!"

If he was still able to make scathing jokes about the candles, Stoick decided, he must be okay.

But just then, as he was allowing himself to relax over Hiccup's fate, a shadow fell over the boy, shrouding him in darkness. The stern-looking old woman from behind the counter looked even sterner now, glaring down at him over her spectacles. "Excuse me." Her voice was icy when she spoke. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're disturbing the other customers."

* * *

"Man, I've done a lot with Gustav over the years, but I have never gotten kicked out of a store before!" Thirty minutes later, and Hiccup still regarded the whole thing as a highly amusing adventure. "And what was with that woman? _Disturbing the other customers_…" he repeated scathingly. "What she meant was that I was telling the truth about her candles!"

"Well, thanks for that. Really," Stoick said sarcastically. "If I ever want to go into that store again, I won't be able to!"

"Oh, why would you ever want to go into that store again? Those candles were hideous!" Hiccup veered suddenly left, toward the bakery, from which delicious smells were wafting, but Stoick pulled him back by the collar of his oversized brown jacket before he could, fixing him with a stern look. "I accept that my vetoing abilities have been revoked," he began, but Hiccup interrupted.

"But you can't veto the bakery! I've never been inside!"

"No, I'm not vetoing the bakery. I'm just saying we need some ground rules. As in, when people begin to stare, you stop laughing or joking or coughing or…or whatever it is you're doing that's getting us stared at. I'm not getting banned from the bakery, too."

"I can see why you wouldn't want to," Hiccup looked to be in a state of pure bliss just by standing in the entranceway, breathing in the heavenly smells. "C'mon, let's go in—what are you doing?" He turned in surprise to see Stoick staring off into the distance at a figure emerging from another one of the stores, a few bags in her arms.

"What are you waiting for?" Hiccup edged closer to the entrance of the bakery, keen to go inside. "Let's go, c'mon."

"Wait, I think that's Astrid…hang on, I've been meaning to talk to Mrs. Hofferson for awhile now about that meeting…" he tugged on Hiccup's sleeve, leading the boy regrettably away from the bakery, toward the figure.

But as Hiccup was bemoaning his fate, he caught sight of who Stoick was attempting to flag down, and suddenly all conscious thoughts flew out of his head. His mouth dropped open, but he was not aware of it. Whoever this girl was, she was beautiful. Tall and willowy and blond, with bangs obscuring her eyes and a slight smile on her face. Her blue eyes slid smoothly from shop to shop, clearly on the lookout for something, her bags wrapped around her wrists for safekeeping. Her crimson skirt flared out about her lovely hips, and her legs were long and elegant. She was absolutely _perfect_.

"Astrid!" Stoick smiled warmly at her, allowing his grip on Hiccup's sleeve to slacken, but the boy barely noticed; he was completely enraptured by the beautiful girl in front of him.

"Oh, hi, Mr. Maddox!" The girl smiled back, though hers felt hurried, as though she had just finished her Christmas shopping and was eager to get home. "What's up?"

Even her voice was perfect. And her name…_Astrid_. Hiccup repeated it silently to himself, letting it fill his head. Her name was perfect, too.

"What are you doing?" Stoick leaned down a little to offer his assistance. "Do you need some help with those bags?"

"I'm out buying a gift for my mother," Astrid confided, allowing the man to unwind two of the bags from her wrists and easily holding them in his arms. "Why, what do you need?"

"Oh, I just wanted to talk to her about that meeting over at the Lakeview – she doesn't know the details yet, and I need to tell her them."

"Alright, well, then, I'll tell her—oh, who's this?" Her perfect, mesmerizing blue eyes finally shifted over to Hiccup, and the boy felt himself instantly going red, suddenly very self-conscious. He opened his mouth, intending to tell her his name, but nothing came out. First five seconds passed, then ten. Stoick kept watching him, seemingly reluctant to end the torturous silence.

Finally, after Hiccup's fourth attempt to break the silence, which was going strong at almost sixty seconds, Stoick spoke. "This is Hiccup."

Hiccup had an urge to add his last name, but he didn't know it, so he just stood there for a second, unsure what to say.

Astrid smiled, leaning toward him for a second to speak. He nearly missed her words because he was staring so avidly at her. "So, what, is he your…son, I guess?"

"My son?" Stoick looked from Hiccup to her, and back again. "I think if I had a kid, I would find cause to mention that to you once or twice."

She gave a sheepish smile, which was just as perfect as her normal one. Hiccup noticed with another little jolt of the heart that her teeth were perfectly straight, white and even. "Sorry, I didn't know what else he'd be. A nephew?"

Stoick winced and shook his head, indicating she had just struck out for a second time. "Actually, Hiccup is my…" He hesitated, and in that hesitation, Hiccup knew what words were on the tip of his tongue, so near to being said that he really did almost say them. _His ticket to being mayor. Something he's going to pick up and use as needed, and throw away again when I'm not useful anymore._

The bitter thoughts almost startled Hiccup out of his lovestruck daze, but then he caught sight of that heart-stopping, gorgeous smile, and everything fled his brain – especially the part that controlled his conscious thoughts. He didn't hear Stoick's answer, hardly cared – the only time he registered anything around him was when the man grabbed his sleeve again, leading him away from Astrid.

"'Bye, Mr. Maddox! 'Bye, Hiccup!" She called merrily, picking up her shopping bags again and swinging them around her wrist.

Hiccup was soon ushered into the bakery, but he barely remembered wanting to go there, or why – he just stared unseeingly at the glass cases boasting all sorts of delicious pastries, suddenly not as hungry as he had been ten minutes ago.

"So, what was that about?"

"Huh?" Hiccup mumbled, tearing his gaze away from the German chocolate cake slice behind the glass, finally meeting Stoick's eyes. He blushed at the knowing look the man was giving him. "What was what?" he asked defiantly.

"Oh, don't try to lie, Hiccup – I saw your face."

Hiccup's blush deepened, but he stared determinedly back down at the cake slice on display. "I'm unavailable for comment on the events of the last ten minutes."


	9. Chapter 9

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: Hello! This is the newest chapter. It's basically Hiccup and Gustav being goofballs, but there's a few hints as to what will happen next. Sorry if you guys prefer more serious chapters, but I felt I'd done enough of those to warrant a rather silly one. I hope you all enjoy! And 89 reviews, wow! :D Thank you all so much! Here, virtual gigantic cookies to all who have reviewed! :D **

* * *

Unfortunately, just because Hiccup was unavailable for comment did not mean that Stoick wasn't. He did not seem to want to let the matter drop, and was clearly still thinking about Astrid even when he fell silent, and Hiccup took advantage of his silence to talk at great length about several of the pastries on display, hoping to distract him.

"So, you've never been here before?" Stoick finally switched topics as Hiccup practically pressed his nose to the pristine glass separating him from the vast array of sweets.

"No." Hiccup didn't look up at the man as he talked. "I don't think I've ever been in this mall, to be honest. Gustav and I have never been here, at least, and I usually take him with me whenever I go anywhere." Hiccup finally pried himself away from the glass, taking one last minute to stare longingly at the pastries before Stoick captured his attention again.

"Alright. So, what do you want to try?"

"Oh, we're buying something?"

"What, you thought I was bringing you in here just to look? I do not enter bakeries lightly," Stoick joked.

Hiccup grinned, turning back to look at the various treats. "I don't know. Do they have any really good cookies? Everything is always better with chocolate chip cookies."

Stoick nodded his agreement, and spoke to the woman behind the counter while Hiccup allowed his mind to wander aimlessly as he himself did the same, going up and down row after row of cakes, cookies and candies.

Hiccup stopped suddenly, midway up one row, leaning down to get a better look. Was that…was that gummy bears…baked into a _chocolate chip cookie_? He couldn't decide whether this would ruin the cookie or improve it, as there was really no way for a cookie to be improved, but adding gummy bears tended to improve everything.

Stoick caught his attention by calling his name, beginning to lead him out of the store, but stopping almost immediately to settle himself down on a polished wooden bench, pulling out the two bags and handing one of them to Hiccup.

Hiccup took it with a quiet thanks, tore the seal easily and opened it, pulling out…the biggest chocolate chip cookie he had ever seen. Each chip was as big as his fist, and the cookie actually threatened to break in half in his hands, it was so huge. He could only stare in awe.

"What?" Stoick's grin faded as he caught sight of Hiccup's expression, raising an eyebrow. "What is it?"

"This," Hiccup held the cookie up higher, and it really did break off then, half falling into his lap, the other into his open hand, and he turned it over, examining it. "How does this…how does this exist? I mean, what do they use to bake this? A giant's oven? This is huge!" Nonetheless, he appeared to have no qualms against food possibly baked in a giant's oven, because he broke off a small piece and popped it in his mouth, his eyes widening as the taste filled his mouth. It was better than any chocolate chip cookie he had ever had before, that was for certain; this was_ good_.

"It's not that big," Stoick mumbled, in weak defense of the bakery, pulling out his own bag, opening it up, and taking a small bite of the chocolate cake drizzled with frosting within, using the small plastic fork he had somehow managed to nab on his way out.

Hiccup's eyes were alight with joy as he tucked the rest of the cookie back inside the bag, setting it down on the bench seat when he was finished. "Can I take the rest back to the orphanage?"

"Why?" Knowing Hiccup, he probably wanted the cookie to somehow cause chaos, or show it off to the other kids and tell them he knew what a giant's bakery looked like now.

"I want to take it back to Gustav," Hiccup explained, redoing the seal and watching Stoick patiently as the man took another bite of his cake.

Stoick looked up from his cake a little curiously, swallowing his bite before asking, "Do you…always share your food with him?"

"Sometimes," Hiccup replied with a shrug. "When there's not enough to go around, and he didn't get a lot, yeah, I give him some of mine."

Stoick swallowed again with some difficulty. "Does that happen…often?"

"Oh, it's not like that, Mr. Maddox," Hiccup added earnestly, obviously spotting Stoick's expression and realizing where his mind was going. "The headmistress of the orphanage tries her hardest to make ends meet and everything – it's just hard, and she's been getting sick lately – in fact, I think she has a doctor's appointment today, and she'll probably get some medicines to clear everything up. She put off going for quite a bit because money's getting tough."

"But she doesn't have enough money to _feed_ you?"

"I told you, she's getting sick. And it's not like she does it on purpose or anything, it's just that sometimes, she doesn't have the money she needs to buy enough food for all of us – it's not a big deal, really." Hiccup played with the seal on the bag as he talked.

Stoick had been on the verge of putting the cake back in his bag, but he froze halfway through Hiccup's words. "But…but Hiccup, that's a really big deal! If there's not enough food for everyone, shouldn't she try harder to—?"

"She doesn't make enough money." Hiccup stated it plainly, completely unashamed, unembarrassed by the fact that his orphanage was evidently on the poor side of things. "She tries her hardest, but she just can't, there's just not enough for everyone. She's recently been discussing closing down the orphanage, but she's got a sister and a sister's daughter who might be able to help keep things afloat until after Christmas, so we can spend it here instead of in an unfamiliar place."

Stoick couldn't speak. He looked down at Hiccup for a long second, his fingers fumbling with the seal on his bag as he fought to close it. When he finally managed, he tugged Hiccup up from the bench, still in a frozen stupor, unable to voice everything that was wrong with that sentence, even as Hiccup looked up at him curiously.

He led the boy through the mall, surprised to find him beginning to brighten up, looking in at all the stores, his excitement clear on his face.

"C'mon, c'mon, stop walking so slowly," he complained, emphasizing the last word. "I want to see as much as I can before I have to go back!"

* * *

Hiccup nearly forgot his book and cookie, so focused was he on getting inside and telling Gustav about his day. He knew the kid would be as excited as he was, and probably want to play with him before bed, so he foresaw at least an hour of pretending to be a pirate ahead of himself again.

"Take the cake, too." Stoick motioned to the second bag lying in between them, thrusting it at the boy so he couldn't say no. "Go on, I'll probably bury it in my pantry and forget I even had it, so you might as well take it and enjoy it."

"Oh. Thanks, Mr. Maddox!"

When Stoick had officially brought him back inside the orphanage, Hiccup barely got two seconds to smile at the new woman filling in for the headmistress before a small blur leapt upon him and tackled him to the ground, laughing and shouting. "Hiccup! Hiccup! Where did you go today? Did you see anything fun? Is Mr. Maddox still nice? You were away for _so long_!" he finished dramatically, flopping on Hiccup's stomach with an exaggerated sigh.

Hiccup grinned, pushing Gustav gently off and onto the floor, the smaller boy letting out a great _whoosh_ of breath when he finally hit the ground.

"Slow down, Gustav, for goodness' sake," Hiccup joked, sitting up fully now that the smaller boy was off him. "And to answer your question, Mr. Maddox was still nice. Even though I got him kicked out of a store."

"Kicked out?" Gustav exclaimed.

Hiccup laughed at the expression on his face, and began to tell the story, remembering the cookie and cake partway in, and quickly pulling out the bags, shaking them for emphasis with a huge grin.

Gustav's matched his, and he made a grab for the bags, but Hiccup was too quick for Gustav, and pulled them away much too soon. "Oh, no, Gustav – it's late, it's almost time for your bed."

"But Hiccup!" Gustav protested, trying to widen his eyes innocently.

Hiccup, who had by now learned to avoid this trick, closed his eyes pointedly so he wouldn't be tempted. "No. I mean it. If you want them, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow." In retrospect, he should have waited until tomorrow to show the kid these things.

"But I've never been to this bakery," Gustav pleaded, sounding for all the world like he was trying to weave this into some sort of tragic tale. "Please? Please, please, please, please? Just a little bite? Please? Please? Pl—

"Okay!" The kid had discovered his weakness, and Hiccup reluctantly reached into the first bag, pulling out the cookie. "Just a little bite."

* * *

There was a knock on the door, and both Hiccup and Gustav froze, looking at each other guiltily for a second, a red flush spreading up the teen's face. Before long, however, the guilt was quickly forgotten, and both of them started laughing uncontrollably again, the whole world seemingly very amusing.

Hiccup knew, in the back of his mind, that he should have tried to keep it down. After all, somebody had obviously heard them. He would have been worried, except they'd polished off the whole cookie and suddenly everything seemed hilarious.

Gustav was of the same opinion, bouncing up and down on the bed repeatedly, giggles pouring from his mouth as he messed up the pillow and blanket continually, finally quieting down when Hiccup opened the door, checked up and down the hallway, and found nothing. Who had knocked? Had it been his imagination?

Gustav brought him back to his senses – or not – by hitting him as hard as he could with a pillow, which was to say that he hit him rather lightly. Hiccup grabbed a pillow from the next bed over, lobbing it at him as well, the laughter starting up again. They continued on like this for well into the night, doing everything they could think of until exhaustion suddenly overtook them both and they collapsed on the nearest bed and fell asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: I've second-guessed myself a lot with this chapter. Basically, I have no idea if it's any good or not. Sooo...tell me? :3 Preferably in a review. Or a PM. But you don't have to. But we are almost at 100 reviews, and I get to celebrate every time I hit 100 reviews on a story, soo :3 thanks you guys. Thank you so much, :)**

* * *

Hiccup couldn't think what was wrong.

Nonetheless, when he awoke he knew something was wrong, and it didn't take long for him to realize that someone was pounding and kicking at the door, demanding entry. He stumbled to his feet with the intention of letting the knocker in, as the doors had a tendency to jam, or at least the ones down this hallway, and nobody had yet discovered why, or made a move to tell the headmistress, so they remained as they were.

However, as Hiccup approached the door, it flew open of its own accord, waking Gustav, and a woman walked in, her every step making a clacking sound. When Hiccup looked down, he realized she was wearing high heels. The expression on her face made him very aware of the fact that his hair was plastered to the side of his head from sleep, and it made him certain that she was aware of it, too. Behind her, Hiccup could see some other boys in the orphanage had gathered into a small crowd, having been woken by the racket.

The woman was pretty, Hiccup supposed, in her own way. Her hair was frosty blond and short, cut in layers, with straight bangs hanging down past her eyes, giving her a bored look. She resembled their headmistress, loosely, but she was at least twenty years younger, and she looked stricter. Hiccup wondered if she was somebody's mother before catching sight of the engagement ring on her hand.

The woman glanced around the room, her nose wrinkling as she took in everything about it, all at once: the unmade beds, the rumpled clothes on the floor that somebody had carelessly thrown there a few nights ago – Hiccup certainly hadn't done that, and neither had Gustav. When the woman spoke, her voice was sharp and clear as glass. "She really should get these doors fixed." She motioned to the one she had just been wrestling with, distaste clear in her eyes. "And this place is an absolute dump heap."

Hiccup felt a hot surge of boiling anger at these words. The headmistress tried her best to keep things neat, and the boys helped her sometimes – although boys, by nature, were messy creatures, they did try to help her with everything – and this woman had no right to go on about it like it was the city dump or something.

"Who are you?" One brave soul from the crowd of boys called out, and the woman whipped around, icy blue eyes narrowed, looking for the one who had dared question her. Perhaps she deemed it best to answer the inquiry, however, for after a moment, she gave up.

"I am Mrs. Hannigan's niece," she informed them haughtily, lifting her chin and displaying her power here. "You may call me Mrs. Cambridge." She gestured to the sparkling engagement ring on her hand. "She – my aunt – was diagnosed with the flu yesterday, at her doctor's appointment, and as they recommended her to take a few days off, she asked me to fill in and watch over you brats until she can come back."

There was something about the way she said 'brats' that made every boy gathered there just stare blankly back at her. Mrs. Hannigan had never spoken to them like this before, when she bothered to speak to them at all. With thirty kids, and trying to stretch her time in between each one, she never had enough time.

"And as I was saying," Mrs. Hannigan's niece's eyes flicked back around the room again, "this is a filthy place. You ought to clean it while she's gone."

None of the boys answered, still staring back at her. Hiccup could sense Gustav's feelings about this woman already, so he drew in a deep breath, deciding to be the first one to speak. The woman might speak sharply, but if she was a relative of Mrs. Hannigan's, she couldn't be that bad.

"Alright. We'll go down and get something to eat, and then we'll get started." Hiccup nodded at her to let her know her orders were being heeded, but Mrs. Cambridge merely raised her eyebrows disbelievingly, as if she found him intolerably insolent.

"No, you won't."

Hiccup, feeling taken aback, stared at her for a moment, trying to think of the one thing she didn't want them to do. But she'd just told them to clean, and he wasn't saying they wouldn't…

"You won't get breakfast until this place is spotless, come on."

Hiccup was glad that the other boys broke into a chorus of whispers and protests, because that meant the woman looked away from him to give his compatriots a swift, stern look, because he was sure that the disbelief at her words was showing on his face. Mrs. Hannigan was relatively on the poor side of things, so it was no wonder that Hiccup knew what it was like to be hungry. He knew what it was like to go to bed without anything akin to supper, and what it was like to have pains because of the lack of food, but Mrs. Hannigan had never starved them on purpose. She divided the food as evenly as she could among them all, and did her best to make sure everyone got something, no matter how small that something was. She had never used food as an ultimatum, or motivation.

Finding he could keep quiet no longer, he stepped forward just to get her attention, crossing his arms. "Isn't this, maybe, I don't know, illegal?" He took a step closer to Mrs. Cambridge.

The woman, who had been scolding a few of the younger boys for their obvious dismay, rose to her full height, her eyes flashing. "What's your name?"

"Hiccup." He said the word proudly, for it was his name, and it was the name that his mother had given him, wherever she was.

Mrs. Cambridge's smile was tight and cold. "I can see why."

With no advance warning, without any kind of expression at all, Mrs. Cambridge reached out and slapped him across the face, with such force that he fell to the ground, though this could have been from shock. No one had ever hit him before, and it hurt far worse than he thought it would. He grasped at his face, little noises of pain escaping him as Gustav rushed over, trying to pry his hand away from his face so he could see the damage.

"All of you, get to work," the woman addressed all the boys now, turning away from Hiccup as if she hadn't just done something that most would call inhumane. "And you get breakfast afterward." She turned to leave, but she stopped halfway there, turning back to Hiccup, her nostrils flaring as she regarded him. "Except for you." She really did leave then, turning and sweeping from the room, her ridiculous high heels clacking with every step.

* * *

Gustav dealt with the blow far worse than Hiccup did. He started crying the instant Mrs. Cambridge left the room, cried so hard that one of the other boys finally got it into his head to close the door, so she couldn't yell at Gustav for his noisy tears.

Hiccup drew an arm around the boy's shoulders, pulling him into a comforting embrace, wishing someone would do the same for him. But he was all alone, and there was no one to protect him from what was to come.

The boys kept looking uncomfortably at the rapidly forming bruise on Hiccup's cheek, and then swiftly cutting their eyes back to the floor, as if afraid to be caught staring. Knowing he had to distract them, Hiccup forced himself to his feet. His legs felt very shaky, like they wouldn't support him. "C'mon," he said, gesturing for the other boys to follow him out the door, "she said she wanted the place spotless, and we'd probably better listen."

Maybe the boys saw some sense in what Hiccup was saying, or maybe none of them felt like getting the same treatment he had; but whatever caused it, they glanced around for a second or two, then slowly began to nod, following him out the door.

Hiccup's cheek still hurt, and he could feel his lips trembling, tears threatening to stream down his face, but he couldn't cry in front of Gustav. He wouldn't cry, because Gustav needed him too badly right now for him to shed a single tear. He had not cried in so long, because the last time he had, one of the boys had told him it was weak. He hadn't said it meanly, or insinuated that he thought Hiccup actually was weak – he'd just told him that you just didn't cry in the orphanage, because yeah, life was full of hard knocks, but you just didn't do it. Hiccup had seen the truth in what he'd said, and he hadn't cried since.

He bit down on his lip so hard it bled, but it stopped trembling, and he didn't cry. The taste of blood filled his mouth as he started to work, and the day soon passed in an endless flurry of scrubbing and washing.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: OH MY GOSH 100 REVIEWS YESSS THANK YOU GUYS THANK YOU THANK YOU :DDDDDDD I'm not in much of a celebratory mood tonight, though, so maybe later I will celebrate. However, regarding two reviews I got -**

**I would make chapters longer, if I could. I say could because I can't write long chapters. I just can't. I lose the flow and I lose the will to keep going. Anything past 3k and, well...also, I have to write chapters in one sitting. I'm not like other people, who can be jerked out of their story and come back to it a couple hours later with no change in flow. My flow changes. Sometimes it gets lost. Sometimes I just can't pick the chapter back up again. I don't know what it is. I must always write chapters in one sitting. And while I could write 5k in a night, as I've done before, it would inconvenience me greatly, and it would take me a few hours to get it written. I have to get chapters written and get them posted immediately afterward. I can't stop to think about them. **

**And to the other reviewer, who said they imagined Hiccup would have gotten into scuffles with the other boys or roughhoused with them before - I don't know why, but I can't see Hiccup doing it. Maybe he'd play around like that with Gustav, but I imagine him to be kind of a lone wolf in the orphanage. He does not interact with the other boys much. If need be, they can band together, and he does stay up with them sometimes to chat, but he keeps things close to vest. Hiccup, in this story, doesn't talk without having something to say. So if he spoke to the other boys, what would he have to say to them? He doesn't know them. Doesn't trust them. He sticks with Gustav and tries to survive, and that's all he does. **

* * *

Things were quiet that night in the bedrooms.

The bedrooms were usually a very noisy place – they were where all the boys congregated to chat, get in fights, do homework, or play card games, most often poker, playing well into the night until all the boys owed each other at least a hundred dollars, but as none of them had any real money to bid with, debts were not held against them.

But the boys were quiet, no fighting or whispering math questions to each other – for it was universally agreed that algebra made absolutely no sense, but they all still searched for the math genius that they insisted had to be there, according to statistics.

Perhaps they feared Mrs. Cambridge, and what she would do to them if she overheard them talking or fighting. Maybe that's why the other boys were whispering, but Hiccup wasn't keeping quiet out of fear. He was just being quiet because he felt so miserable. There was a pounding headache around his temple, and his stomach ached from hunger, and his back was sore from cleaning all day, with no food in his system. Mrs. Hannigan's niece had given the boys as little food as she could all day, except for Hiccup. He had apparently angered her far too much for forgiveness by questioning the legality of her actions, for she had given him no food all that day. It hadn't bothered Hiccup at first – the soupy mixture she'd called their meal had looked wholly unappetizing while it was being served, but now, as Hiccup thought about it again, he felt so hungry that he would have gladly eaten a whole pot of it.

On top of everything, though his cheek had stopped hurting, the facial muscles still protested when he tried to smile.

But he hadn't had very much to smile about, anyway.

The thought made the tears pricking insistently at his eyes that much harder to refuse, so he turned over, just in case he did start crying. But he didn't, he held them back, because he didn't want to cry there. More than anything he'd ever wanted in his life, he wanted to cry to someone, cry to someone bigger and stronger than him, who could hold him and protect him from any evil, and who would smooth his hair and comfort him. Somebody who would love him, and who would stop making him take on all the responsibility alone, the responsibilities of looking after Gustav and pretending to be okay when he was really falling apart on the inside, and trying to smile for people when there was nothing in the world right then to smile about.

He rolled over onto his side, trying to keep the sobs and whimpers inside, even as they built up in his throat, struggling to be released. He wasn't going to cry while the boys were awake, and risk being heard.

To prevent the tears, he tried thinking of things to smile about. Surely there was something good in the world, something he had going for him that would be enough to get him through the night. But what was there to smile about? Mrs. Hannigan was gone, Mrs. Cambridge had taken her place. The boys were gathered around him, quiet and dejected as he felt, and…and…there was somebody crying, sniffling, tugging at his sleeve and whispering his name. He rolled over, surprised to find that the other boys were watching him as Gustav stood by his bed, calling for him.

He slowly picked the boy up in his arms, wishing somebody would embrace him in this manner, even if it would make him feel little and vulnerable. For a second, he wanted to be little and vulnerable if it meant he didn't have to be strong anymore. He held Gustav close to him, trying to think up a reason to smile, now more than ever, because he certainly couldn't cry now, not when Gustav was crying, too.

"We'll…we'll be okay, Gustav," he whispered, smoothing down the boy's dark hair. "We'll be okay, you and me." He knew the other boys were still awake, listening to Gustav's quiet sobs, his own choked voice as he attempted to comfort somebody when he wished dearly for somebody else to hold and comfort him.

"Just think – Mrs. Hannigan will be back soon." It was a mistake to dredge up the white elephant in the room – it made his throat hurt again with the effort it took not to cry. "And things always look better in the morning, after we've gotten some sleep."

And maybe, all along, this was his reason to smile. Tonight was a quiet, lonely night, but tomorrow had to be better. "The sun will come out tomorrow. It might feel like tonight will last forever, but it won't. Dawn will break soon, and then tomorrow will come. Think about it – think about how much fun we'll have tomorrow. There'll be sunlight, and things will be better. The darkness can't last forever. I promise. The sun will come out tomorrow."

He fell asleep with Gustav still clinging to him in a fierce hug, and a smile on his face.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hi :D well, this is my newest chapter. I hope everyone likes. I've had this written for a few days and I decided to post it, as I don't know how much more writing I'll be getting done this week. My keyboard is kind of haywire, as in the 'G' and 'V' keys have started rebelling when I need them. You have no idea what a trial this is. No idea at all. Anyway, I suppose a keyboard isn't that big of a problem. I think I know how to fix a contrary key, anyway. This chapter is slightly longer than the last, but not by much, I think. **

* * *

Hiccup was wrong. Tomorrow was no better.

Mrs. Cambridge woke them all as before, by pounding on the doors and shouting through the wood that they'd better be up and dressed or there'd be no breakfast for them that day. Unwilling to miss his meals for the second day in a row, Hiccup was soon the first one up out of bed, quickly followed by Gustav, while the rest of the boys sheltered under their pillows, groaning about how early it was.

Hiccup didn't bother trying to rouse them; the sounds of Mrs. Cambridge, wrestling with the doorknob outside, prevented any further hope of sleep, and soon they were all stumbling out of bed, still grumbling and shivering a little as their thin clothing offered little protection against the cold.

Why Mrs. Cambridge even wanted to enter the room was a mystery to Hiccup – she'd already woken them quite well with her awful din. Did she feel like she needed to see the results now, instead of waiting until they came down for breakfast?

Hiccup had scarcely downed his meager breakfast – eating quite a bit faster than the other boys due to his intense hunger – when the door to the orphanage opened. Mrs. Hannigan's niece had been in the middle of giving them what sounded like a lengthy list of more places to clean, which made no sense, seeing as they had scrubbed the whole orphanage from top to bottom the previous day.

The woman eyed the boys coldly as she went to take over at the front desk. "Wait right here – I'll be right back."

Hiccup heard her settling herself at the front desk, heard her speaking to someone in an exceptionally nasty voice, and wondered if it was part of her plan, to scare potential adoptive parents off with an outwardly unpleasant demeanor.

But then the other voice penetrated his consciousness and he shot to his feet, head cocked, listening intently. He abandoned his plate and bolted into the next room, a million greetings for Mr. Maddox ready on his lips before he remembered the bruise on his face, and dropped his head accordingly.

"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to just take him without having any idea of your background—

"Then feel free to look me up, if you like! Stoick Maddox, that's my name, and if you'd just let me—

"Wait, did you…did you say Maddox?" Mrs. Cambridge's manner changed in an instant – she widened her eyes and put on a sickeningly sweet smile, continuing smoothly, in a voice like honey. "Oh, I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding, Mr. Maddox, sir, I would never do anything to disrupt the mayor's—

"I'm not the mayor," Mr. Maddox interrupted irritably. "I told you, I'm merely running for mayor. And Hiccup is helping, so if we could get this conversation back on track…"

"Oh, well, of course, dear, Mr. Maddox, sir. I'll bring him right here in a moment or two and…oh, there he is, now!" Mrs. Cambridge stood from the front desk and walked over to stand next to Hiccup, taking him by the wrist. He almost stepped back from her, wanting to shy away from her touch, but then he remembered that Mr. Maddox was still standing there, and it wouldn't be good for him to refuse her like that.

"I just need a little word with the child, before I let you take him and all." Still holding tight to his wrist, Mrs. Cambridge yanked Hiccup forcibly down the hall, into one of the bedrooms, slamming the door shut behind her as she went.

Hiccup stayed silent for a moment, not being entirely certain of the outcome of this conversation, but suddenly everything seemed to click into place, and he started to talk. "He's telling the truth, Mrs. Cambridge! He really has been taking me out of the orphanage for a couple hours every few days and—

"Shut up." Her voice, which had previously been sweet and smooth as honey itself, changed into its usual one, oozing her usual unpleasant hardness. "Just shut up, you think I care about that? You think I care about sending a brat like you off with someone potentially unsafe? No, listen up, boy – I'm not angering a candidate for mayor, so you're going with him. But," she raised a hand in warning, as she saw Hiccup let out a breath of relief, "you're not going to be giving him any complaints about the way I run things here, are you?"

Startled into a sudden realization of why she had really dragged him back here, Hiccup could do nothing but shake his head, unconsciously backing away from her.

"Oh, it's no good, you stupid boy, he'll see your face…and he's not stupid…maybe it'd be better if…"

"No!" Hiccup heard the desperation coloring his tone, but at the moment, he didn't care. All he knew then was that he couldn't bear nearly escaping this place for a few precious hours, only to have it snatched away from him again. Now that the option was open to him, all he really wanted was to leave. "I'll…I'll lie. I'll…I'll tell him…I'll tell him…" At a loss for what, exactly, to tell Mr. Maddox, he merely stood there in silence for a second or two before inspiration struck. He looked Mrs. Cambridge straight in the eye. "I'll tell him I was roughhousing with the other boys."

Mrs. Cambridge regarded him doubtfully. "Really?"

"I won't tell him anything that's happened since you've come here. I could cover up the bruise, if you like, but I think it would just raise more questions if I tried to do it with clothing, or something."

The woman still looked unconvinced.

"Look, from now on, as far as everyone is concerned, I got this bruise while I was goofing off. And Mr. Maddox is starting to get curious about what we're talking about here, I'll bet, so let's come on."

Mrs. Cambridge grabbed him by the upper arm this time, making him wince as she dragged him back out into the open, instantly releasing him when they were within sight of Mr. Maddox.

"Off with you, then," she gave him a shove toward Mr. Maddox which did not feel entirely sweet, but though he stumbled, the man was almost instantly there to steady him. He was not looking at Hiccup, though – he led the boy out to the car without looking back, frowning slightly. "What happened to your regular headmistress?"

"Flu," Hiccup responded, a little shortly, he felt, as he climbed into the car. A wave of relief swept over him as they began pulling out of the parking lot, and he felt, childishly, like he was leaving all the bad things behind, and that the sun was finally coming out.

* * *

Stoick was, by nature, not an observational person. He tended to take things at face value, more often than not, but for some reason, something about Hiccup felt off, and it concerned him a good deal more than it should have, for one who claimed to merely be using the child as a plot for his political career. He threw another glance at the boy beside him, catching sight of a dark patch on his face that looked a little like a bruise but must have been a shadow.

He turned his attention back to the road, the tension deserting him when the boy started speaking.

"So, what did you do while I was gone?"

Stoick cocked an eyebrow in surprise. "Election stuff. You'd find it boring, I'm sure."

There was something odd about the way the boy wouldn't look at him, just kept staring out the window. "Probably. Where are we going today?"

"Not on any more of your little adventures, that's for sure," the man grumbled, throwing a sidelong glance at the boy. "Not after getting me kicked out of a store!" A part of him hoped the joke would draw a smile from the boy, maybe even a laugh, but Hiccup gave no audible response for a bit, and if he smiled, Stoick couldn't see it.

"So, what did you do while I was gone?" With Hiccup, things were never boring, and the man felt sure that he had at least one interesting story to share.

Hiccup shrugged listlessly. "That cookie you bought me? Gustav and I ate it all the night I got it. I confess."

"You do realize that cookie was not meant to be eaten in one sitting?"

Hiccup turned away from the window, and Stoick caught a quick glimpse of the grimace on his face before he turned his head away. "I do now." He grinned to himself as he spoke the words.

"But it was really your fault, you know," Hiccup informed the man. "Buying me that huge thing – I'm a young, impressionable child. What did you think I was going to do, when presented with that much food at once?"

"Well, I'd hoped you'd be sensible about it," Stoick teased. "But I see now that's just wishful thinking."

Hiccup sank down in his seat, another smile already taking shape on the half of his face that Stoick could see. "Now, seriously, where are we going today? I need to be ready for anything, you know. Like strict ladies who own candle stores with scents that could literally kill a man."

"I don't see why you couldn't just keep it _down_ in that store," Stoick grumbled. "It's a small wonder why she kicked you out, Hiccup. And as for where I'm taking you, I'm not sure. But I know for certain we're not going to a candle store, the mall, or a bakery with cookies that big, as you can't be trusted to eat responsibly."

"Oh, _c'mon_!"

"And if you get any ideas, I am allowed to veto them at my pleasure, and you are not allowed to veto my veto skills."

"…Am I allowed to veto your ideas?"

"…Yes, I suppose."

"Then we're even."


	13. Chapter 13

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: It's long! It's long! It's long! Look at it, it's long! And it's the starttt it's the start :D Baby steps, Stoick and Hiccup. Baby steps, you emotionally constipated lump of facial hair and you poor abused little mistreated cutie pie. Oh, also, I mentioned Oliver Twist because just yes xD I love that book. And I made a joke about it gives me evil ideas for this AU Hiccup and so I had to mention it xD **

* * *

It took them a long time to decide where to go, not least because they were continually disagreeing with each other on the best place. Hiccup still kept his face turned slightly away from the man, but he seemed to be regaining his old spirit, and grew more cheerful the longer they were away from the orphanage.

Stoick had spent the last twenty minutes shooting down every one of Hiccup's suggestions, which included a guitar shop ("but neither of us know how to play guitar!" Stoick had pointed out) another, bigger bookstore ("You're going to break my bank, kiddo. I see what you're doing," Stoick told him) a candy store ("Not on your life," said Stoick) and the beach (stony silence from Stoick's end).

"Can you think of anything a little more…I don't know…our style?" The man finally asked, coming to a crawl at the red light before releasing the brake completely, staring straight ahead.

"…The gym?" Hiccup suggested.

Stoick turned sharply to face the boy, his brows drawing down into a playful scowl. "I said our style. When has the gym ever been…Hiccup, what happened to your face?"

In the excitement of the day, Hiccup had forgotten about the bruise, and immediately put a hand to his cheek, as if hoping to conceal what was already seen from view.

There was a second or two of silence in which the man thought the boy was not going to answer, but he finally did. "It's a nice battle scar, isn't it? Real conversation starter, this one."

"Hiccup, I'm not kidding, where did you get that?"

"Not important." The boy waved a hand dismissively. "The other boys can be a little rough sometimes and—

"_Hiccup, where did you get that_?" Stoick wasn't playing anymore; he was genuinely concerned. Why was this why Hiccup had kept his face turned away? Was he scared of this kind of reaction? But a bruise like that warranted this kind of reaction, didn't it?

"The other boys." Hiccup shrugged. "See? Like I said, not important."

"The other boys?" Stoick repeated. He heard the accusation in his tone, and knew he was being unfair, but if it had been something as simple as roughhousing amongst his peers, why had he carefully avoided the question – and eye contact – all throughout the drive?

Hiccup's green eyes darted away from the man and then back up when he spoke. "Wh-why…I mean…I'm not…I'm not lying or anything, it's the truth. I'm just not that great at winning our fights."

"Fights?" First children going hungry and now they were all getting into fights? How much worse could the orphanage be?

"No!" The boy's eyes widened. "Not like that, I promise – we're fighting, but we're not really fighting. We're not actually out to hurt each other, and we're not angry with each other, but the other boys regularly forget that I'm the weaklings and compared to me, they're like Viking warriors or something."

His words were smooth, and they were believable. So why did something in them feel off?

"Look, Mr. Maddox," the boy said earnestly, tilting his head a little, "is this really worth getting worked up over?"

"You'd…you'd tell me the truth, then, if a bruise ever…ever didn't come from the other boys?" Stoick asked, hoping the doubt wasn't coloring his tone.

Hiccup's brow knitted. "Why would you want to know?" Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to a sign advertising a sports gear store. "Let's go there!"

Stoick was so rattled that it didn't occur to him to argue. He made the turn smoothly, pulling into the parking lot. When the car had come to a complete stop, Hiccup didn't wait for Stoick to start speaking – he unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the door open, entering the store without looking back to see if his companion was following.

His words were perfectly believable. With an orphanage full of boys, it was to be expected that quite a few of them would play around by shoving and punching. Stoick had done his fair share of that when he was a boy. So why did something in Hiccup's words feel…off?

He pushed open the car door, dropping the keys in his pocket and walking across the parking lot into the store.

* * *

It was an enjoyable afternoon. Hiccup immediately put on one of the football helmets, grabbed a basketball off the rack and told Stoick to "go long", and insisted on combining the two sports, despite how Stoick tried to explain the real rules of each to him throughout the entire trip.

A few of the shoppers in the store threw the pair of them dark looks, the man behind the counter even beginning to eye them like the woman in the candle store had, which was Hiccup's cue to put the basketball and helmet back. Reluctantly surrendering the items, he placed them carefully back on their selected shelves and followed Stoick obediently around the store.

"I have to confess, I didn't peg you for a sports person." Stoick picked up a soccer ball from off the shelf, spinning it around in his hand a bit.

"I'm not," Hiccup confided, running his fingers through his hair – the helmet had been extremely staticky, and his auburn strands were standing on end because of it. "It's the frame, isn't it? I'm just too much muscle for the other team to handle." He puffed his chest out and flexed playfully.

Stoick turned to look at the boy, reaching over and messing up his hair so it returned to its normal position. "You would be quite a threat on the football field," he winked. "The opposing team would fear your complete lack of skill so much that everyone would run off the field. And if somebody tackled you? Forget it. You'd be banned from the games for eternity."

"Your confidence in me is touching," Hiccup replied sarcastically, before shoving the man's hand away. "Stop, my hair looks_ fine_!"

"If you say so."

They were silent for a bit.

"What about you?" Hiccup demanded suddenly.

"Eh?"

"Did you ever play any sports?"

"Once." Stoick's voice came out like a sigh. "Football. In high school."

"Ah. Of course. Football. Did you like it?"

The man shrugged. "Well enough, yeah."

"Why did you stop?"

The question took him off-guard, and he quickly took his hand off the shelf he had been touching. "My parents died." His tone was sharp and flat. "I never got back into it afterward."

"Oh, jeez," Hiccup's voice sounded far away to the man's ears. "Jeez, I'm sorry, I…I…" he swallowed, taking the man's hand like he was trying to comfort him. "I thought I had it bad, but at least…I mean…I'm sorry. I didn't know. I wouldn't have asked."

Stoick took his hand away, suddenly angry with himself for speaking of things like this in the middle of a crowded store. Other people were watching, and Hiccup was a kid. He didn't need to hear all this stuff, whatever his situation. "It doesn't matter. It's not your fault."

The boy trailed after him as they continued to walk around the store, but their silence stretched longer than before, and they still hadn't spoken more than a few words by the time they exited the store.

The engine purred as it slowly came to life, and Hiccup allowed a small smile to cross his face. "Remember the first day I rode in this thing with you? I know it was only like, a week ago, but…it feels like it's been forever."

"Yes." Stoick's voice was stiff, and he worked to soften his tone. He had been eighteen when it happened, there was no need to get all upset about it now. He smiled a bit, to cushion the sound of his voice. "You were in awe of the Thunderdrum, as I recall."

"Well, I walk everywhere, of course I was in awe."

"Ah. You're a regular Oliver Twist."

"Oh, hush. I don't mean it like that and you know it, Mr. Bumble."

"Why am I the beadle?"

Hiccup thought for a second. "No idea. Mr. Bumble was mean, wasn't he? I guess you'd be Mr. Brownlow then. Maybe Mr. Losberne?"

Stoick harrumphed, and they continued their drive in silence. When they were nearing the end of their tether, Hiccup leaned his head on the seat's headrest, watching the sky from the windshield. "I guess I'd better…start getting out then soon, huh?"

The man frowned. Hiccup never sounded that reluctant to leave his company. "I guess." The bruise appeared more visible than ever when the boy turned his face toward him.

"Bye, Mr. Maddox." He slipped out of the car, slamming the door shut and slipping into the orphanage, Stoick following soon after.

* * *

Stoick was in his driveway. He had gathered everything he needed, and he hadn't forgotten anything. But he still didn't get out. He just kept staring out the windshield, a little blankly, still processing everything that had happened. It was unfair for him to be thinking this way, unfair for him to suspect Hiccup of lying when the boy had never lied to him before. But the bruise kept swimming to the forefront of his mind, Hiccup's careful avoidance of his gaze, and the way the new headmistress had looked at them when he'd brought him back…it wasn't right. Something felt off. And the new headmistress was also weighing on his mind. The bruise just mysteriously disappeared after she had shown up? It felt like too much of a coincidence to be true.

The man slowly took the keys out of the ignition, twisting them around in his hand as he got out of the car and went up to the front stoop, entering the house. Almost the instant he was inside, his cell phone rang, that annoying jingle beeping out, echoing through the empty house.

Eager to stop the sound, the man grabbed at the phone, remembering to check the caller ID before flicking it open. His heart lifted. Gobber! At last, here was someone he could talk to, someone he could share his fears with.

"Stoick, you rose ten percent in the polls, but you dropped a little because—

"Gobber, I need to talk to you."

"Yeah, I bet you do. Apparently, you were kicked out of a store for causing a ruckus?"

"Oh." Stoick bit his lip, trying to bite back a smile as the memory suddenly looked very amusing from that side of the fence. "That was Hiccup, not me. And that's what I want to talk to you about, Gobber – Hiccup. I…" he drew in a deep breath, unsure how to proceed. "I think—

"Say no more!" Gobber sounded excited. "I know what you're thinking – one more big push ought to win you this—

"No, Gobber!" Stoick interrupted his friend. "That's not what I mean. It's his orphanage. I think…I think…I mean, he just looked up at me and he had this huge bruise on his face, it was…it was something else. It was_ bad_, Gobber. And the orphanage just got this new headmistress, it's just—

"Are you suggesting that she's abusing them?"

Stoick sucked in a breath. "Maybe."

"Excellent!"

Stoick's eyes widened, sure he hadn't heard right. "What?!"

"This will look even better for your image!" His friend said gleefully. "Mayor saves kid from abusive orphanage, are you kidding? Now you're not just saving him from skidding cars, you're saving him from child abuse, too!"

"That is not excellent! You're completely misunderstanding the point!" Stoick bellowed into the phone. "It's not about the election right now! This is about…this is about…Gobber, I'm worried. I don't know what's going on in there, and if I ask, he wouldn't tell me the truth."

"So, what are you suggesting we do?"

Stoick had been thinking of calling Social Services and sharing his suspicions. He'd been thinking of going to the orphanage himself and observing things. But inspiration suddenly struck, and he knew the first part of the solution.

"I think I'm going to adopt Hiccup."


	14. Chapter 14

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Bleaghhhhh I am sorry I am sorry that this chapter is more mindless depressing guff I'm sorry but but but the next chapter should be happier? A little? Maybe? But my keyboard has been fixed :D so that's good I guess. And I really enjoyed writing Stoick in this chapter like holy cow. And I'm drawing something for this story. It's very elaborate, and I'm still stuck on the second part, but if I work really hard I can get it finished by next week. Thanks for all the reviews! **

* * *

"Stoick, no offense, but have you lost your mind?"

"No. I mean, I don't…I don't think so," the man muttered, mostly to himself, his thoughts still spinning wildly. He became steadily more excited as the idea began taking shape in his head. Hiccup's face when he heard the news. That headmistress getting removed from the orphanage, or maybe it would be discovered that she had never hurt them in the first place. In truth, Stoick would have preferred that second option, as the memory of the bruise made a boiling anger start in his blood again. If that really had come from the woman, and not from the other boys…

"Hiccup is part of the election!" Gobber fumed. "He's not a long-term sort of thing!"

"What?" His friend had done the trick of jerking him back to reality and realizing, with a sudden embarrassment, that he had made the mistake of speaking his mind. He and Gobber, when they spoke, it tended to revolve around the polls, the people, the rival candidates. Numbers and cold, hard facts. Never their thoughts, never their feelings. Why had he thought he could say that, just blurt out his idea without this kind of negative feedback? "I…I know." _But Gobber you should have seen him. The way he looked at me when I said it was time to go back…I can't spend another day with him, only to bring him back at the end of it._

He caught himself this time, and didn't say the words passing through his mind.

"It's a mistake, Stoick." Gobber's voice was brusque. "You'd be making a mistake. Think about it. If you won the election because you adopted him, only to bring him right back to the orphanage after it was over, the game would be up. People would know, and—

"It's not about the election right now!" The words flew from Stoick's mouth before he could stop them, and suddenly there was silence on the other end of the phone. Yet it was true, what he'd said. He didn't want to win the election by adopting Hiccup – he wanted to keep Hiccup away from the orphanage, even if the arrangement only lasted a few weeks.

When Gobber remained silent, he hastened to explain, trying to turn things back around. "This is about that bruise. If something happened to him, if he got hurt…" But he couldn't go on. The idea was too horrible to entertain.

His friend's voice was stony. "Call Social Services, then. Get the police, or something, just don't adopt him! You'd be giving him the wrong idea."

"I'm going to do that," the man responded steadily, working to keep his voice calm. "I'm going to call Social Services based on my suspicions. But I'm also going to adopt Hiccup."

"Why?" Now Gobber just sounded exasperated. "If you're going to do all that, why adopt him, too? You've done enough for him. One more big push and the election will be won. But that big push doesn't have to be adoption."

Stoick fell silent, pondering his friend's words. How could he explain it? How could he explain that whatever he had done, whether it had been pulling him from the path of a skidding car or buying him a book, how could he explain that it hadn't been enough? He couldn't. He couldn't tell Gobber how much else he wanted to do, how much he felt like he needed to do. He needed to do more for this child, this teenage boy that had stumbled into his life and lit it up from the inside out, lit it so completely that everyone walking by could see the glowing sphere of warmth and joy that he positively radiated. He couldn't explain it, but everything he had done, it wasn't enough. It just wasn't.

"I want it to be," he said instead, holding his breath as he waited for Gobber's decree. He readjusted his grip on the phone, surprised to find that his hand was shaking slightly.

"Alright, Stoick." Gobber released a deep sigh as he spoke. "Alright."

Excitement rekindled, Stoick began to smile, already preparing to end the call.

"Just make sure…" Gobber hesitated before finishing his sentence, and Stoick hastily put the phone back to his ear. "Just make sure the election doesn't become about him, instead of the other way around."

"Oh. No. That won't happen." Stoick nodded vigorously to convince his friend, even though of course Gobber couldn't see him. He pressed 'end', and the call went dead.

* * *

_Selfish. _

The word haunted him, crawling all over him like an unwanted thing, bouncing around inside his head and echoing in his ears, a constant, never-ending reminder of what he had done. How could he have been so stupid? What had he thought, that by going out with Mr. Maddox, he would come back and poof! A magic wand would have been waved, and the orphanage would be back the way it used to be.

In truth, Hiccup had thought that, or something akin to it, at least. Mr. Maddox returning for him had been the figurative sun coming out after an endless rain, and he'd actually, childishly believed that those hours spent in the Thunderdrum and the sports store had been slowly erasing and rewriting all the bad things of the past twenty-four hours. And he hadn't been there at the orphanage when Mrs. Cambridge lost her temper, he hadn't been there when Gustav needed him. She hadn't hit the younger boy, of course – Hiccup would be feeling a lot angrier if she had. But now, the only person he was angry with was himself.

He was the only stability in Gustav's life, and he'd just left him there with Mrs. Cambridge. He was Gustav's only support, and he'd left him there without anything to lean on. He fell into bed that night still thinking of his mistakes, staring blankly at the ceiling, his heart aching with sadness and a sudden loneliness as his mind jumped to Gustav again.

Starlight falling heavy across his pillow, he glanced out the grimy window for a moment, watching the other boys shift restlessly all around him. So many nights he'd spent staring out that window, at all those stars, wishing on them with Gustav, wishing for his birth parents to come find him and take him away from there. He and Gustav had even fantasized about it, said maybe they were brothers who had found each other even when separated. But maybe his birth parents would never come back for him, and he would never know, Hiccup thought, falling back on his pillow. He was in the orphanage despite thirteen years of wishing, because his parents had never found him. Maybe he would be here forever, just as he always had been. Just as he always would be.

He kept waiting for Gustav to come and snuggle up next to him and ask him to sing or read to him, but the younger boy never did. He stayed on his own bunk, his breathing even and heavy, so Hiccup assumed he must be asleep.

He soon followed suit, and although his dreams were filled with sunlight, they were the bittersweet kind of dreams, dreams about a tiny cottage on the outskirts of town, with birds chirping around it and smoke rising from the chimney. Inside the cottage were two people whom he somehow knew were supposed to be his birth parents, in the dream, though he had never imagined them looking like this. The woman was tall, with a thin face and long, reddish brown hair like his, her green eyes clear and kind. She had sharply defined cheekbones and thin lips, but she was supposed to be his mother, and Hiccup thought she was beautiful.

His father was the only person he couldn't understand, for he resembled Mr. Maddox, except with different features, like a more rounded nose, to match Hiccup's, and he looked more relaxed than Hiccup had ever seen him look. He was flipping through a paperback novel while the woman, his mother, was sewing in a wooden chair in the corner, her mouth even thinner than normal as she focused on each and every stitch.

He dreamed they remembered him, the baby they had left at the orphanage thirteen years before, and he dreamed they had missed him all the time. He dreamed they held him, his mother's fingers tangling in his hair as she cried quietly into his shoulder, telling him she had never once given up hope. She was a quiet crier, though, and if it had not been for her tears, he would have assumed that she felt no emotion for the son she held. Mr. Maddox, his father in the dream, ruffled his hair and threw a ball to him in the yard and held him up on his shoulders, laughing and talking about how much he'd missed him. This struck Hiccup as very odd, as the man looked like Mr. Maddox, but couldn't be, because the man who saw him every day just wasn't an emotional man, and he would never talk of emotions.

And Hiccup awoke, alone and in the dark, the starlight having vanished now. Even the stars had rejected him. He awoke in the orphanage, just as he always had, just as he always would.


	15. Chapter 15

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: Alright, so I just accidentally turned on my Caps Lock and didn't freaking realize it for almost a minute. Anyway, guess what, my keyboard is fixed, woo, woo! :D In other news, this chapter deals in more adult stuff like politics that I completely fail to understand, but I made Hiccup understand it because that is my logic. Basically, I know the basics of politics and I know of the two existing political parties but I mostly stay out of it because I don't want to be an adult! I don't! I SHALL CLING TO MY CHILDHOOD AND PRETEND I AM NOT TOO OLD TO PLAY WITH BUBBLE SOLUTION OR NERF GUNS. Anyway, I gotta sign off :P**

* * *

Mr. Maddox didn't come back.

A week came, and a week went, and still the orphanage door remained untouched and firmly closed, and Mrs. Cambridge remained their substitute head. In the rare moments in which Hiccup wasn't busy cleaning the place or comforting Gustav, his mind burned with questions. Had Mr. Maddox won the election? Had he guessed the true origin of the now faded yellow and green bruise on Hiccup's face, and decided it would be better to just stay out of things? Hiccup wouldn't blame him if he'd chosen to go that route. If only he could choose to stay out of everything, it's what he would do.

Mrs. Cambridge was both delighted and slightly disappointed by this turn of events, as it meant no more risk of the mayor figuring anything out, and lost no opportunity to tell Hiccup, in her cold-as-ice yet sweet-as-sugar way, that this was probably for the best, and he should learn to get over it. She also pointed out that this was a new opportunity for him to be adopted, and be permanently out of her hair. Yet at the same time, disappointment reigned, as she appeared to have liked the good publicity the orphanage had received when the mayor had been visiting regularly. In what could have been an attempt to make him forget the whole thing, she set about making him clean everything in sight, and as a result, the first thing she saw every morning was the first thing he polished every day.

The other boys were no comfort, either. Turned out, they seemed to have expected this since day one, when they'd discovered the real reason why Mr. Maddox was taking Hiccup, and their only words on that matter were, "You got your hopes too high, kid. Better luck next time."

But on the eighth day of Mr. Maddox's absence, while he scrubbed the old, weathered wooden floor in one of the bedrooms, Hiccup could not think that he'd gotten his hopes too high. He had never once allowed himself to actually think that the man might ever see him as more than a tool for a political project, but he also didn't think Stoick heartless. Surely, Mr. Maddox still remembered him, and would soon come back to tell him he'd won the election. And then…the boy's heart sank. Then they would part ways, and he would end up forgotten, alone. Somehow, he had not considered that. If the man came back now, only to tell him the election had been won…he would no longer be needed. It would be the last time he ever saw Mr. Maddox.

Hiccup returned to scrubbing the floor, perhaps a little more vigorously now, as if the dirty surface had personally offended him, but instants later, he was straightening up, cocking his head, listening intently. The door to the orphanage had just opened downstairs, and Mrs. Cambridge was conversing with this newcomer in a low, sugary voice that made Hiccup feel sick. He turned resolutely back to attacking the floor with his scrub brush, feeling his brows draw down into a scowl as he scrubbed viciously at a stain that simply wouldn't come out, no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't sure how long he had been scrubbing that spot when the voices from downstairs ceased abruptly.

For a second, all was silent, until…

"HICCUP! GET DOWN HERE!"

Surprised that Mrs. Cambridge even remembered his name, and refusing to allow himself to hope, the boy walked out onto the landing, beginning his descent. "I'm almost finished with those bedrooms you told me to get started on, and—

"And this man is here to adopt you."

"Huh?" For a second, Hiccup didn't quite hear the words, and his brain didn't work. He met the woman's cold blue eyes, but his gaze traveled farther until he saw…_Mr. Maddox_? He was _here_? He was _back_? But he'd been gone for seven days. The election was won, and he was only coming down to tell Hiccup that, surely…the woman might have said adoption, but really she didn't mean that. She meant he was only planning on telling him the good news, and then he would be gone, out of Hiccup's life forever, and he would have no need for the useless loser from the orphanage anymore. All the same, Hiccup forced himself to smile. He was going to be happy for the man. He was going to pretend to be happy about the news. He wasn't going to do anything dramatic. He wasn't going to say anything. He wasn't.

But Mr. Maddox didn't speak. He had been carefully watching the boy's expression all throughout the exchange, but now his eyes flitted downward, and Hiccup realized he was still holding the scrub brush in one hand, and it was dripping soapy water onto the floor. Knowing Mrs. Cambridge would kill him if he didn't sponge that up soon, but not wanting to waste a second of the last few minutes he had, he attempted another smile. "So, you won?"

"What?"

"You won, right?" Hiccup repeated, shifting a little so the scrub brush was no longer dripping onto the floor. "I mean, I know…I mean…it's great. I'm really happy you won, Mr. Maddox."

"Wait, the election?" Mr. Maddox's expression cleared. "That?" At the boy's nod, he shook his head. "No. I didn't win."

"Oh. I'm sorry?"

"No, I mean, nobody's won yet. They haven't…the election isn't over."

"Oh. _Oh_." It took a few minutes for the truth to sink in. He wasn't going to be abandoned yet. Mr. Maddox still wasn't done with him. The sudden joy from the realization was so deep and intense, he suddenly sagged against the head's counter, which was currently polished and gleaming, courtesy of him.

The man frowned, and Mrs. Cambridge, impatient with how many wrong turns the conversation had taken, scowled at the boy.

"Weren't you listening, Hiccup? This man has come to adopt you."

It took a long time for the meaning of the words to hit him, and when they did, all other thoughts came to a screeching halt. Wait, what? Adoption? Here? Now? Him? But…but he was never getting adopted. He was never supposed to get adopted. This was completely wrong, completely surreal…a dream. Yes, this had to be a dream. When he was little, he used to have dreams all the time about getting adopted by a nice man who was like a father to him, or a kind young lady who was like his mother. But this couldn't be a dream. In his dreams, he was always delighted to be adopted. Now? Now he felt frozen and numb, his mouth opening and closing, no words coming out. "But…but…" This was all he could say. He wanted to protest, wanted to say things weren't finished here, but this was all he could think of. He couldn't leave, not now. Not after he'd just left Gustav. He couldn't be adopted. He had to say something, he had to speak up. He had a responsibility to look out for Gustav, and he wouldn't be—

"I knew it!" The little boy's cry from somewhere around Hiccup's shins made him glance down, startled, realizing that the younger boy in question had been hugging his legs this whole time. "I knew you'd be adopted!" No. This was wrong. He wasn't getting adopted. He shouldn't be. He had never been adopted. He had accepted the fact that nobody would ever want him, and it wasn't fair of Mr. Maddox to take that away from him! Anger licked his insides, startling him back to life. No, it wasn't! This man thought he could just walk in here and crumble Hiccup's whole world without him even _caring_?

"Adoption?" His voice came out shaky, but he willed it steady. "I don't…I mean…no!"

"No?" Mrs. Cambridge looked just as surprised as Mr. Maddox, and both of them stared openly at him. Even Gustav was watching him openmouthed.

"I don't…no! I belong here! What makes anyone think that I _want_—?"

"I thought…I thought…" and now the man was sputtering.

"You thought wrong! Why on earth would I want this? What, is this for the election or is it pity? I'm an orphan, maybe, but I'm not a charity case!"

"Hiccup." Mrs. Cambridge's voice had lost all its sweetness; it now held a dangerous edge. "Upstairs. _Now_."

"No. I don't want to be adopted, I've made that clear enough, and—

"Up. Stairs." She split the word in two, her icy blue eyes spitting sparks.

Seeing that arguing was getting him nowhere, the boy resolutely stomped up the flight of stairs, ducking into the half-cleaned bedroom and resuming his cleaning, waiting for Mrs. Cambridge to join him. Sure enough, the woman's clacking steps from those stupid high heels soon echoed on the stairs, and she slipped into the room with him, shutting the door behind her with a click of finality. "You are going to be adopted by him, and you are going to like it."

"No, I'm not." He threw the scrub brush back in the bucket, splashing soap suds everywhere and suddenly too angry to care. "If he's going to be like this, then so am I! He doesn't have the right to come on up here after a week of silence and wreck everything!"

"Wreck everything?" Mrs. Cambridge's eyes narrowed. "You stupid boy, he's not wrecking anything! He's the only person who will ever want you, so you better take it!"

"What about the bruise?" True, it was fading, but it was still visible, and currently it was the only advantage Hiccup had. "Why aren't you all worried about him questioning it?"

"You've already told him where it came from," Mrs. Cambridge replied, though his words had the desired effect; she stiffened, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes narrowed dangerously when he didn't respond, and she grabbed at his upper arm, shaking him, forcing him to look at her. "_Didn't you, you little accident?"_

"Yes!" The admission sounded fearful, but honest, and the head was obviously satisfied. Quickly releasing the boy, she smoothed her dark blue skirt and ran her fingers over her blond bun to make sure it was still in place.

"Now, then," she was breathing rather heavily when she spoke, "you don't have a choice in the matter of adoption. And besides, you need to do what's best for the children here. This place is getting wonderful publicity, with the mayor showing up and all. Maybe it'll help us stay open and you…" her voice turned suddenly, sickeningly sweet. "You poor, little unwanted selfish brats can stay here even after Christmas."

_After Christmas!_ Hiccup's heart thumped in his chest as he considered this new prospect for the first time, hope filling his heart. He didn't want to go with Mr. Maddox, didn't want to leave Gustav alone, but if these next few weeks were spent pretending, maybe the orphanage wouldn't have to close down after all. Everyone knew publicity meant money, and Gustav needed stability in his life…he needed it so much, and this was the one and only thing Hiccup had not been able to provide…but now…

"Alright." His voice was a whisper. "I'll do it."

Mrs. Cambridge smiled, a mocking imitation of a friendly gesture as she patted his head. "Good boy," she said softly, like he was a dog that needed to be housebroken. Her fingernails scraped his cheek, and Hiccup willed himself not to flinch. Realizing the conversation was over, he turned suddenly and exited the room, taking the stairs two at a time, as he had no wish to walk beside the head. And with her ridiculous high heels, it would take her easily twice the time it took him.

"Hiccup." Almost the instant he was back in the room, Mr. Maddox grabbed at his upper arm, and though it was a much gentler touch than the one Mrs. Cambridge had inflicted, he still flinched as the man's fingers touched the tender area.

"Everything seems to be settled now, doesn't it?" Mrs. Cambridge was breathless when she finally arrived and sat behind the desk, shoving a few papers and a pen at Mr. Maddox with the urge for him to sign.

But for some reason, he was clearly hesitant to do so, and he kept shooting Hiccup furtive looks. Hiccup forced himself to smile as he waited for the pen to fall, for the second when his life was signed away.

Mr. Maddox finally signed, and the head ushered them out the door before anything could be said. The silence now was deafening.


	16. Chapter 16

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Oh, no, awkward babies. I ought to kick them into interaction, no? Oh, but before I do that, let me tell you a story entitled _"why my nail is currently whitish golden brown". _**

**You see, I was lighting candles earlier, right, and I used the fire from a previously lit candle to light this one, and so I lean over and I'm going along lighting the candles when I noticed that the match was burning down rather quickly. Being me, I shrug it off and continue lighting candles, until I became aware of a burning sensation on my fingertip, the area where I held the match. I quickly released the match, without blowing it out, so the still-lit stick dropped onto the tablecloth. I hastily swooped down and managed to blow it out, but there's still a nice burnt hole in the tablecloth now. And, upon closer inspection of the match, it appears I accidentally held it too close to another lit candle while mooching fire from the first, and thus, it was burning in two places at once. It burned part of my nail off before I registered any feeling.* **

***On the other hand, (pun intended) however, this is a very impressive burn. I think I'm the only person I know who's ever burned part of their nail before! **

* * *

The silence in the Thunderdrum was deafening. Hiccup, picking at a hole in the knee of his jeans, kept expecting Mr. Maddox to break it, but the man was making no move to do so. Surely he was going to explain why…? Or maybe he was simply offended, and holding out on conversation until he received…what, an apology? No. Hiccup clenched his jaw, for on this he was very determined. Mr. Maddox was not getting an apology when, in his eyes, he'd reacted the way any other kid in his situation would have. It wasn't fair, what Mr. Maddox had done to him. It just wasn't. It wasn't right for him to just waltz right back into the orphanage, like nothing had happened, like he hadn't been away for a week, like he hadn't left Hiccup hanging, wondering what had happened, thinking of impossible scenarios every time he tried to sleep.

No, he was not getting an apology. But he was getting questions. And he was getting a lot of them. But just as he opened his mouth to ask the first, the man interrupted him.

"What did she do to you?"

"What?" Hiccup felt his brow knitting, a bit of his anger dissipating to make room for confusion.

"That woman." Mr. Maddox's hands were clenched so tightly around the wheel that his knuckles had gone white, and Hiccup realized he was furious. What did he have to be angry about? Resentment welled up in the boy again. He was the one who should be angry! Mr. Maddox had just flipped the tables on him, without ever bothering to explain why, and now he was angry? With who, Hiccup? For what? What had Hiccup done to earn this man's anger?

"What woman?" Hiccup worked to keep his voice steady, to focus on the conversation at hand, even though his hands were shaking from his indignation.

"That headmistress." Mr. Maddox practically bit out the words. "What did she do to you?"

"Why do you care?"

And the man looked honestly surprised. He glanced over at the boy, eyebrows raised, mouth trying to form words, but Hiccup wasn't done.

"You just came in and wrecked everything. You were gone for a week. I had no idea what had happened. I assumed the election was over. Why are you coming back now? What are you doing here? And who do you think you are, just…just coming in and taking everything away? There was nothing wrong with…with…you could have told me, alright! Did you have to…to blindside me? Did you have to just burst in there, after nothing, not a word, not a single thing to let me know what was going on? Just, boom, off the map, you're gone, oh, no need to tell Hiccup where I am, because he's just a plot in my career as mayor, I don't need to let him know anything, I can just show up whenever I want and do anything I please because he's a toy to be picked up and played with, but he can be thrown away at any given opportunity!"

It took only an instant for Mr. Maddox to give a response. "That wasn't it at all! I was busy—

"Oh, you were_ busy_, now, were you? Why is it okay for us to do things on your terms, and not on mine? Why is it okay for you to be busy, for you to leave me, and it's not okay for me to leave you? Why are you…why can't…I don't…" He was so angry he wasn't even sure he could still speak.

"Now hang on a second!" Mr. Maddox snapped. "You're not being fair, Hiccup – hear me out."

"Why?" There was so much more he longed to say, but something held him back. It was the hope that Mr. Maddox could explain this all away, put it into words that he could understand, words that could calm his anger and help him see that the man had meant well.

"I wanted…I decided to adopt you with good reason, keep that in mind." There was something he was deliberately not saying there, and though Hiccup longed to know what it was, he knew enough to keep silent. "I didn't realize…I didn't realize you didn't want to be adopted."

"Well, you're right. I _didn't_."

"What did she do to you?" There was that question again, and Hiccup debated on what answer to give. Finally, he decided on the safest possible route.

"I don't know what you mean."

The man blew out an irate breath. "I mean that I walk into the orphanage, that woman wants to get you adopted as quickly as possible, and you come down there raising Cain because you don't want to be? Then she takes you upstairs and somehow just convinces you? And she needs privacy to do that?"

"You think she abused me?" It wasn't technically abuse, what the woman had done. Just a smack on the face, nothing he couldn't handle. The bruise was fading, anyway, so it wasn't like Mr. Maddox had any proof…

"That's not—

"Because I'm sure you'd care _so much_ if your little toy was damaged." Hiccup was fairly certain he was speaking through gritted teeth now.

"You're not being fair!" The man's voice suddenly rose over his, and he turned suddenly down a deserted, tree-lined street before turning to look at the boy. "That's not what I meant at all!"

"Well, then, can you please explain what you meant? Why is it that apparently I'm not important enough to be consulted, but I'm just useful enough to be_ used_?"

When the man next spoke, Hiccup could tell it was an effort for him to keep his voice even. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

There was silence.

"Did you honestly think I would be happy about getting adopted?"

"I…I…"

"Because I'm not."

"But isn't a home better than the orphanage?"

"But we both know you're not giving me a home, Mr. Maddox," he responded quietly.


	17. Chapter 17

_**Hard Knocks **_

* * *

"Wait, wait, so Hiccup was _adopted_?"

"That's what Mrs. Cambridge says."

"Who took him?"

"Well, whoever did, he's their headache now."

"But I heard Hiccup really didn't want to go. Started yelling at Mrs. Cambridge right there in front of whoever was coming for him, told her he didn't want to be adopted."

"I think it was that scuzz running for mayor? Mr. Maddox or something. Thinks he's so great…"

"Yeah, but question is, if Hiccup's gone, who's gonna look after the kid?"

All eyes turned to Gustav the instant this inquiry was voiced. The kid before them, all big gray eyes and a messy mop of dark hair, was the only thing the older boy had left behind in his resentful departure. The little boy didn't appear to care much that they were speaking of him; he had been sitting quietly, neither moving nor speaking.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" One of the older boys suggested half-heartedly, holding out a fist to show how he planned to settle the dispute.

Another boy made a noise of protest.

"Maybe he could get passed around? I get him Tuesdays, Dogsbreath gets him Mondays—

"Wait a second, why do I get him Mondays?"

"Oh, keep your hair on, I'll take him on Saturdays."

"I'll take him Wednesdays."

"Thursdays for me?"

"Oh, alright, I can take him on Sundays."

"But that leaves Fridays for me?"

"Do you have anywhere special to be on Friday nights? It's not like you're winning any popularity contests, either."

"Oh, shut up."

"Well, it's true! Settled, then? He takes Mondays, I take Tuesdays, he takes Wednesdays," – this all being said while pointing to each boy respectively – "and he takes him Thursdays, while he takes him Fridays?"

"Yeah, okay, that works."

"Why doesn't Clueless have to take him?"

* * *

There was silence until they reached their destination – not because it suited Hiccup, but because he had already determined that he himself was not to be the first to speak. Swallowing back his words proved difficult, however, when he spotted the building that was to be his new home, most especially because his anger was quickly dissipating in the face of surprise that the mere sight of the place inspired. If you had asked Hiccup where he thought Mr. Maddox must have lived, this would not have been the first place to come to mind, yet the ritzy-looking apartment complex seemed to suit him, with stories stacked on carelessly, as if the architect had merely lost interest halfway through.

Hiccup raised his eyebrows in silent astonishment. The place had an air of magnitude and money, automatically making him wary. The car entered the dark parking garage. Mr. Maddox cut the engine swiftly, pushed open his door, and stepped out onto the pavement. Hiccup unbuckled his seatbelt and hastened to follow. Still unwilling to open his mouth and begin a conversation he wasn't ready for, the boy kept a determinedly quiet air all the way into the building – but upon entering, he found he could keep quiet no longer. His first impression, that the residents came from money, had evidently been correct. But never had he seen money put to such good use as this, and for an instant, he spun around, determined to take in everything about the lobby at once. Mr. Maddox, however, clearly used to the unexpected grandeur, and oblivious to the awe which it inspired, hurried on without the boy, and Hiccup was left with no choice but to follow.

"You live here?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and following the man into the elevator. "What is…I mean…I mean…this is a nice place." He regained his composure rather quickly, recalling his own reluctance to speak, hoping the man wouldn't mistake his sudden speech for an attempt at extending the hand of truce.

Mr. Maddox lifted an eyebrow, but his reply was simple. "Yes. I do. Live here, I mean," he hastened to clarify, as the elevator came to an abrupt stop. Hiccup waited for the man to get out before doing so himself, as he was not eager to explore his new living quarters any more than he had been in the car.

He hurried to keep up with the man's enormous strides, falling behind him more than once, looking around in curiosity at all the closed doors surrounding them. The place had all the somber seriousness of a hotel or library and, for reasons he didn't quite understand himself, the boy struggled to keep quiet, every breath a silent gasp as he quickened his pace.

At last, they came to a door, very simple, shiny and wooden, and without further ado, Mr. Maddox twisted the knob, pushing sharply against the wood, and they entered.

The first thing Hiccup registered was sunlight. And lots of it. It was pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating everything in gleaming golden color, dust swirling in the air. The second thing he registered was how big everything was. The white sofa looked like it could seat at least a dozen people, and the television was still blaring, apparently forgotten, in one corner of the room. On the far end of the room, there appeared to be a doorway leading to a kitchen, another leading to a bathroom, and third branching off to God knew where. The stairs continued on up out of sight, and Hiccup's eyes watered from staring into the bright sun. He spun in a slow circle, afraid to take his eyes off the grandeur even for a second, lest it all fade. For an instant, he was completely enchanted. And then he caught sight of Mr. Maddox again, and hastily formed his features into a scowl, turning away from the man and crossing his arms.

He knew the man was waiting for some sort of audible approval, but he was as determined not to give it as Mr. Maddox was to acquire it.

There was the silence of but a few seconds before a loud jingle broke it, and Mr. Maddox dug his phone out of his pocket, quickly silencing it before glancing at the screen, looking pained. "I have to take this. Just give me a minute."

Hiccup kept his expression guarded as the man disappeared, into the third door, where Hiccup caught a glimpse of a pale-colored bedroom before the door shut completely, blocking him from view.

He gazed around the spacious living room for a second, refusing to allow a few cosmetic delights to sway his opinion, before a new idea occurred to him: Mr. Maddox was gone, for the moment. He had time enough to look around, at least. Walking carefully over to the bookshelf, and then remembering the still running television, he reached over the back of the sofa, hands traveling over the silken surface of the fabric covering the seats, trying to seek out the remote and click off the screen. Not that he had any actual idea how to work a remote control, but he was hoping it was straightforward.

He leaned a little farther, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen, but fingers still scrabbling for the remote. Unfortunately, this final move sent him off balance, and he went over the back of the couch, collapsing on three of the cushions in an undignified heap and immediately springing to his feet again, only to hit his shin on the coffee table, and fall back into his original position, holding his leg with one hand.

He rolled up the leg of his jeans to examine the area, before a knock on the door distracted him from this task, and he quickly jumped up, looking around a little nervously. He didn't actually expect Mr. Maddox to have guests. He seemed an unsociable sort of man, and the idea that anyone might be visiting to see the man was absurd. He slowly stood from his place on the couch, bruised shin all but forgotten as he walked forward to open the door.

When he saw who was on the other side, he was pretty sure he stared. Openly. For a really, really long time. These were undoubtedly two of the richest people he had ever beheld in his life, and he felt suddenly self-conscious, ducking his head a little to hopefully avoid their gaze. He felt rather like a fish in a bowl as the two, man and boy, stared at him for a second or two. He lost patience.

"Well? Who are you? Might as well come in, but if you're looking for Mr. Maddox, he's on the phone."

"You're that boy!" The kid took a quick step into the apartment, not even taking his eyes off Hiccup to admire the luxury of the place. "You're that kid, right? The one that my uncle saved?"

"Uncle?" Hiccup's brow knitted. "I didn't realize…" he began, but quickly trailed off. It was silly of him to just assume that Mr. Maddox had no surviving family, but he had never spoken of having a brother or nephew.

The man's features melted into something resembling pity. "Are we intruding? We can leave—

"No, you're not," Hiccup cut in quickly. "I told you, though, he's on the phone, you'll have a bit of a wait."

"We did agree to meet you when you came, but I didn't mean…" Mr. Maddox's brother, who did indeed bear a strong resemblance to the aforementioned, though with dark hair rather than red, held up his hands to show his helplessness.

A sudden anger ripped through the boy, chasing away his awe. Had everyone but him known? Had everyone but him been taken aside and consulted by the man, even though it would affect his life, not theirs? Even though he was the one whose whole life was changing? He had never felt more like a zoo exhibit in his life.

"Have you just arrived?" the boy inquired, obviously spying Hiccup's battered, lightly packed bag.

"Yes." The red-haired boy clenched his hand a little tighter around the strap, setting it down on the floor. "But it's alright, I told you. You couldn't have known." He cautioned himself to be civil. Nobody but Mr. Maddox could be to blame.

"Would you like somebody to show you around the place while I wait for my brother?" The man offered him a friendly smile, gesturing to the boy who was obviously his son. "Snotlout knows this place probably better than Stoick himself, and we'd both be happy to make you feel welcome."

Hiccup offered them an awkward, rather tight smile. "Um…"

The door opened then, putting an end to the small talk. Hiccup would have been willing to thank every deity he knew that the conversation, though pleasant, was now over, if it hadn't also signaled the return of Mr. Maddox, who came out looking puzzled and confused as he shut his phone. "Spitelout? What…what are you doing here?"

"Stoick, I'm sorry," the brother widened his brown eyes instantly, looking every bit as contrite as his words painted him, "had I known you were bringing him home today, I would have waited. But I had something to discuss with you, and I was in town, so I thought it'd be wise, kill two birds with one stone and the like…may we still discuss, or are you too busy, with…ah…" his eyes flickered over to Hiccup again. "Previous engagements?"

"No." Mr. Maddox's response was hasty. "No, I wasn't."

"Oh, good, excellent." Spitelout's smile was genuine. "Snotlout," he added, as an afterthought, "why don't you go show Hiccup the house? I'm sure you don't want to be cooped up in here with the adults…"

With an obedient nod, the older boy took Hiccup by the arm, tugging him out of the room and into the next, where they stood staring at each other for a minute or two. Finally, the other smiled. "Hi. I'm Snotlout. I'm…your new cousin, I guess?"

Hiccup's attempts at civility were put under severe strain as he gritted his teeth. Did the boy honestly think he was asking for an Insta-Family? That wasn't what he wanted! None of this was what he wanted! He forced his face into an expression of studied indifference. "You can call me that if you like, but Mr. Maddox is not my dad." There – friendly, yet firm.

Snotlout seemed thoroughly off-guard due to this response, and hastily forced himself to give another smile. "Well…okay, then. Come along, I'll show you the rest of the place, if you like. I think you're gonna like it here."

* * *

**A/N: So, I decided to post this at the bottom of the chapter, instead of the top, so I can ramble all I want without keeping you. And...I have nothing to say. How the frick? D: I can talk for hours at other times, but when I give myself permission, all my words disappear? Really? **


	18. Chapter 18

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hi! Well, this is my newest chapter xD It's Hiccup and Snotlout being goofballs, just because I could xD oh, but don't worry, Stoick's still gonna come back into the story in a big way. Anyway, I don't really have much to say about this? I don't have much to say at all, really. **

* * *

There was no time to respond, whatever Hiccup might have wanted to say. Snotlout was already leading him down the long hallway, past several closed doors, finally coming to a stop at the bottom of a staircase. "What part of the place do you want to begin?"

Hiccup shrugged. "It doesn't matter." _Because I won't be here for much longer than a few days, at best. I'll be here as long as I'm useful, as long as I'm needed, and then once the election's over, maybe Mr. Maddox will decide he's done screwing with my life, and take me back to the orphanage._

Snotlout looked uncomfortable again. He seemed to do that a lot whenever Hiccup spoke. "Okay, then, come on. We'll begin with the kitchen, I guess."

"Okay."

The older boy pulled him through the nearest doorway, where top-of-the-line appliances gleamed on every available surface, and a small kitchen island sported several barstools along the edge, offering an alternative place to dine. Hiccup ran his fingers along the handsome black stove. "I didn't realize Mr. Maddox cooked?"

"I didn't, either," Snotlout confided, earning a small grin from the younger boy. "Anyway, what you really need to know is, don't get in between my uncle and his first cup of coffee. We stayed over here for like, a week last summer, and that's the most important piece of advice."

"Thanks, I'll remember that."

"Over there is kind of the dining room," Snotlout continued, gesturing to the other end of the room, where the sunlight pouring in from the huge windows illuminated a chair and a table. "The view is pretty great, and I'm pretty sure my uncle makes it, like, a point to get takeout at least once a week, so you're set there. Only downside? He's one of the few human beings on earth who does not enjoy pizza." The older boy made a pained face. "I'm trying to work on him. I'll work faster now that you're here," he promised, turning and walking down the hallway again, opening doors at random. "See, this is the bathroom…that there is the living room, but you've seen that already…shush, they're talking in there, be quiet…and here—oops!"

"What's in there?" Hiccup asked, trying to peer around Snotlout's shoulder to get a glimpse, but the older boy closed the door too quickly.

"That's my uncle's bedroom. We're not actually supposed to go in there."

"Why not?"

"I dunno, we're just not. I guess he wants his privacy, is that so wrong? C'mon, let's go upstairs."

Snotlout led him up the wide staircase, through the nearest door on the landing, and into a grand bedroom with an enormous bed, a huge closet, and gigantic windows completely covering one wall. There was a desk in the corner, shoved up against the wall, a little lamp set upon it for extra light.

"This must be a guest bedroom," Hiccup announced, examining the – _wow, really cool_ – lava lamp on the bedside table. He tapped the glass, but immediately drew back upon finding it was uncomfortably hot.

"Nah," Snotlout shook his head. "I think this is your room."

"What?" Hiccup rose up suddenly, looking around the room with new eyes. All this…all this…sure, the room was bare, the walls plain and undecorated, but it was…it was so much, too much. He could only gape at it for a second or two before turning to Snotlout. "It's…it's am— He caught himself before he could give the apartment the undeserved praise. Biting his lip, he turned to stare resolutely out the window, crossing his arms as if to protect himself from the traitorous thoughts.

"It's what?" Snotlout's brows drew down, evidence of his confusion, but Hiccup did not answer, and the older boy soon shrugged it off. "That's pretty much the whole place, Hiccup. It's nice, huh?"

Hiccup shrugged noncommittally.

"I do think you're gonna like it here," the older boy persisted.

"Well, I don't," Hiccup muttered to himself, still staring out over the city. He was on level with a huge business complex.

"What?" Snotlout seemed surprised. Hiccup flushed when he realized the older boy had heard. He'd just insulted this kid's uncle.

"I…I…" he began, quickly trying to backtrack, but before he could finish, a grin formed on Snotlout's face, and he started waving it away.

"Obviously, you haven't seen the best part of the apartment yet."

"Meaning…?"

"Oh, just you wait and see. C'mon!" Without further ado, he grabbed the boy's hand and physically yanked him down the hall.

* * *

"See? It can even regulate the temperature, so it knows just when you're comfortable!"

"If it's that smart, do you think it can give swimming lessons?" Hiccup peered down into the depths of the empty pool.

Snotlout's smile disappeared as he realized the mistake he'd made. "Oh. Oops. Well, I mean, we could get a coach or something—

"No. No, thank you." Hiccup didn't like the permanent way Snotlout was talking, as if he was actually going to be here for a long period of time. He stepped carefully around him, but Snotlout easily kept pace.

"Hang on, you haven't seen everything! The pool is really just the beginning!"

* * *

"And here is where we play Ding-Dong-Ditch."

"I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon. Isn't that frowned upon? Is that even legal?"

"It's…well…it should be," Snotlout admitted grudgingly, frowning. "You know what, I never thought about that before. I've never been arrested before, although one old lady did call the cops on me once after I did it to her one too many times. She didn't have my name, or anything, but the cops started patrolling her street, so I had to stop."

"That is definitely a sign of illegality," Hiccup confirmed with a nod. "C'mon, I don't want to get in trouble today so let's not do anything illegal, okay?"

"Alright, alright, fine." Snotlout paused for a second. "Let's find what we can to entertain ourselves, I guess. What do you think we should do?"

"Um…go to the—

"We can't leave the building."

"Why not?"

"Because my dad wouldn't like it. He'd worry." The older boy rolled his eyes.

Hiccup was suddenly hit with a sharp, unnerving burst of jealousy at the words. He turned away, determined to hide his emotions. _Snotlout just doesn't understand. He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that having a dad like that, a dad that cares…that's a gift. That's a blessing. His dad worries. Why doesn't he appreciate that? _

Hiccup quickly tried to compose himself. "Do you want to do a scavenger hunt?"

"What?"

* * *

"What?" Snotlout gaped at the page before him in shock. "How am I going to find all of this?"

Hiccup grinned. "That's the way the cookie crumbles."

"Bu—wha—Hiccup!"

"Sorry! I'm off to find a fake flower!"

"How am I going to explain—what if my dad hears?"

"He won't!" Hiccup called before turning the corner and disappearing from Snotlout's view. And then he consulted his list again. "Fake flowers, Snotlout? Really? Where am I going to find one of those?"

He considered for a second. "Maybe one of these people has a fake flower they can loan me…"

For all his flaws, Hiccup was not a thief. But this didn't mean anything to the people he spoke to. "Hey, can I borrow a fake flower?" No go from the unshaven bachelor on the third floor. A stony look from the teenage girl.

"Is this some kind of prank?" A pretty twenty-something woman asked, before shutting the door in his face.

_Mission failed._

* * *

"Mission accomplished," Snotlout said gleefully to himself, darting out from behind the potted plant he crouched behind, to grab the abandoned, half-empty paper cup on the countertop. Judging by the smell, it was full of coffee, but Snotlout hardly cared about the contents – all that mattered to him was that he had secured a cup of liquid, per Hiccup's requirements.

* * *

"Well, you're on my list…" Hiccup murmured thoughtfully to himself, reaching down to grab the Sharpie off the countertop. "Okay, so the next thing is—

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?" He tore his gaze from his paper to see a man in his mid-thirties, looking a little confused.

"Have you seen a cup of coffee around? It was just here…"

"No, I can't say I have. Want some help?"

"Oh, no, that's fine…I probably drank it all and just forgot…I must be going out of my mind."

* * *

Snotlout swallowed. Without a doubt, this was going to be the awkwardest thing he'd ever done in his life…was that even a word? Awkwardest? Oh, forget it! He was just putting the moment off, but he'd have to do it soon, otherwise Hiccup would win. He pulled out his cell phone, drew in a deep breath, and walked over to the old woman coming out of her apartment. "E-excuse me?"

"Yes?" The woman turned kind blue eyes his way, eyes that crinkled up at the corners when she smiled.

"C-can I…can I take a picture? With you? Of you?" He loathed Hiccup with every bone in his body right then.

"Oh." The woman blinked, looking put on the spot. "…Alright?" She ended it like a question.

"I'll just…yeah." Photo snapped, Snotlout hoofed it out of there, determined to get Hiccup back for this.

* * *

"Everything!"

"Me, too!"

"Even the fake flower?"

"And you! Even the photo?"

"Yep!" Snotlout pulled out his cell phone, displaying the old woman's picture on the dirty screen.

"Hey, that's the woman who gave me the fake flower!"

"Must have been a weird day for her, then. And the cup! I think it's coffee."

The man looking for his lost beverage flashed in Hiccup's mind. "I think you should return that."

"Wait a second," Snotlout forestalled his new friend, holding up a hand. "Did you…just return here?"

"Yeah. What about you?"

"So did I."

"We tied!"

"Are you serious?"

"Oh! I haven't even shown you the best place yet!" Snotlout's eyes lit up.

Hiccup frowned, confused. "I think we've hit all the floors…"

"Yeah, I think we have, too, but that's not even the best place! C'mon! You know, this coffee is pretty good."

"I told you to return that!"

"Do you think he'd give me more if I asked? Here, try a sip."

"This is a stranger's—! Oh, wow, it is!"

"See? Oh, we're almost there!" Through a door with big block letters on the front that Hiccup didn't get a chance to read, and up another staircase. Snotlout pushed open the final door, and Hiccup stepped carefully through.

He was met with a sudden, cold gust of wind that blew his hair back from his face and huddle deeper into his jacket, winter sunlight spilling from the heavy clouds, illuminating them in golden color, standing as they were on the rooftop. Hiccup didn't want to ask if this was legal or not. For right now, he didn't care. He just ran to the edge of the railing, leaning out, laughing into the wind, letting the sun caress his face. For a moment, he felt alright.

He could almost taste the coming snow in the air, could taste the pine needles and frost, as strongly as he had tasted the coffee. He leaned out a little farther, feeling rather than seeing Snotlout join him.

"See?" The older boy bumped his shoulder. "I told you that you'd like it here."


	19. Chapter 19

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Well, this chapter was quite short, but I figured it set the mood nicely. Next chapter will be longer. I'm supes tired. **

* * *

Hiccup was quite shocked at the aerial beauty of their little Ohio town. He never thought things could look so different from so high up – then again, he'd never been in very many high places, literally or figuratively. He edged closer to the railing, his thin body pressed up against the metal bar now, a smile blooming on his face. "It's amazing up here!" And for once, he didn't care who heard his praise – he shouted it to the sky, the birds, letting the clouds and sun and whole town hear what he knew they must know. He leaned out a little farther, before a sudden sound from Snotlout's phone had him backing away, glancing at the other boy.

Snotlout flicked open his phone, eyes scanning the screen so fast it made Hiccup dizzy. When he got to the end of the message, he made a face. "Dad says it's time to go. Figures." He raised his eyes to meet Hiccup's, giving the kid a punch on the shoulder that was not entirely painless. "Until next time, I guess?"

* * *

When the two boys reentered the living room, Hiccup was more animated, happier, than he'd been all day. Stoick could barely keep his eyes off the redheaded boy – so stoic and silent in the car, yet chatting as easily with Snotlout as though they'd been friends for years. The different sides to this wacky kid were endless. "Yeah, and to top it off, I went sliding, Clueless started laughing, and I had to clean the whole floor again," the boy rolled his eyes dramatically.

Snotlout was laughing. "That's hilarious!"

"Yeah, it wasn't so hilarious when it was _happening_," Hiccup told him.

"C'mon, Snotlout," Spitelout fished his car keys out of his pocket, motioning for the boy to join him.

"Ah. And this is where we part." Snotlout hung his head, like he was heading for the gallows, before turning to Stoick. "Uncle! This poor deprived kid has never had pizza! You must right this wrong at once!"

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," Stoick muttered, eyes still straying to Hiccup. The boys didn't quit talking until the apartment door slammed in their faces.

"So…" he drew in a deep breath. This was the moment he'd been dreading. Would there be more of the rage he had received in the car? Or…would there be a change? Would Hiccup see he'd done what he'd thought was best? To be fair, he should have talked it over with the boy first, and heard him out. But he'd just been so certain… He decided to latch onto a subject that the boy clearly had warm feelings on. "You like Snotlout, huh?"

"He's awesome, Mr. Maddox!" Hiccup spun around, green eyes sparkling again, talking so fast Stoick could barely keep up. "He went and showed me the whole apartment, oh, it was so cool! And he showed me the rooftop! We walked on it and everything! And of course, he made me get a fake flower from this poor old woman…I'm going to get him for that, by the way, remind me to do that…is he staying in town? He said he and his father live pretty far away. I hope he can come see us again before he has to leave! Can you ask your brother if he can do that? And then we…" and it was as if somebody had just flipped a switch, turning Hiccup off from the inside out. He turned resolutely away, arms crossed, back suddenly ramrod straight.

Stoick's tentative feelings of joy were snuffed out like a light. He wanted to spin Hiccup around, demand answers, demand of him whether things were always going to be like this. Was this how he was determined to spend the next few weeks? Would anything change his mind, make him see Stoick's side?

The man wanted to ask all this and more, but his courage failed him, and he turned away.

"I'm going upstairs." The ice in Hiccup's tone could have combated any glacier. He stalked up the steps, not even looking back.

"Wait, Hiccup, we haven't…" But the boy didn't stop walking until he reached the bedroom and shut the door. Stoick, truthfully, didn't really know what he had been planning to say. _We haven't what? Talked? Seen each other since this morning, when we fought? Eaten dinner? _

Though in truth, he had no desire for dinner, and was fairly certain Hiccup felt the same way.


	20. Chapter 20

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hi! This is my newest chapter of Hard Knocks? I'm really thankful it's written. Just like, omg. So thankful. Finally, the babies are beginning to interact again! No? Well, I'm not sure I really have much to say today...oh, we got a storm today! :D That's the absolute best thing about spring and summer, is all the storms we get! I love rainnnn and I love colddd and I love thunderrr, I even love lightning! Of course, it's dangerous, so I don't love it nearly as much as everything else, haha xD and I had a new book to read while the storm was going on, so yeah, I was happy. Except I gotta stop buying books xD I'm still reading Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein and then I'm rereading You Don't Know Me and How to Train Your Dragon book 1.**

* * *

Stoick was not sure whether it was okay to wake Hiccup yet. He gazed at the boy in the bed for a second or two, biting his lip uncertainly.

For one, Hiccup was sleeping lightly. He was stirring every five seconds, if only to merely rearrange his body by the slightest centimeter, eyes threatening to open every time this happened. And he appeared cold, as he slept under only one thin blanket, draped gracelessly over his bony body. (Stoick had provided more blankets, but maybe they had been too warm.) And it was morning. Bright sunlight was pouring in through the gigantic windows covering the far wall and Stoick was quite certain that this last reason was a perfectly logical one to wake him. There were, however, other factors stopping him.

On the other hand, for instance, he may have been sleeping lightly, but Stoick wasn't sure how much sleep the boy had actually gotten that night. It was possible that he had not settled down to sleep for quite some time, too angry to even think of closing his eyes. The thought made Stoick wilt a bit, and was also his second reason for his hesitation. Hiccup could still be angry. Though he had definitely warmed to Stoick's relatives, it was clear his feelings were less than charitable toward Stoick himself at this moment, although the brief respite in his anger yesterday gave him a bit of hope. Why was he so hesitant to face a child's anger? The question made him uncomfortable, so he shook it off, choosing instead to focus on the other reasons why it might not be okay to wake Hiccup yet. The boy actually looked quite peaceful in sleep, head pillowed by hands, one leg pulled slightly up at the knee. He didn't want to ruin the peaceful image. And it was only eight in the morning.

Then again, he couldn't just leave the kid here. He had to leave in an hour or two anyway, and he didn't want Hiccup to wake up and wonder where he was. Besides, as uncomfortable as he knew this was going to be, he had to talk to the kid. Hesitantly, he reached over and shook Hiccup's shoulder, suddenly afraid that he would accidentally hurt him while struggling to be gentle.

* * *

There was a moment of confusion upon waking up. The first thing he registered was that there was apparently someone shaking his shoulder and they were actually trying to be _gentle_ about it. Nobody had woken him up in this way, ever. Normally, Gustav or the other boys woke him in the mornings, though the others did this accidentally, with their usual early morning clatter, or Gustav with his insistence that he had to get up _right then_, because he might sleep the morning away.

Of course, Mrs. Cambridge had done her fair share of waking him over the past week or so, what with banging on the door or grabbing him by the hair or yelling in his ear. She had done her fair share of waking him, too.

And since the person above him was trying so hard to be gentle, Hiccup knew it couldn't be anyone from the orphanage, not even Gustav. There was no noise around him, except for a faint kind of creaking, and a small, tired sound that might be coming from his own mouth. Where was he? He opened his eyes to explore his surroundings, finding huge windows spilling sunlight across the thickly carpeted floor…whitewashed walls stared back at him. He was on a bed much softer than any he'd ever been in his life, so soft that the mattress itself could be a pillow. His only discomfort was the cold and when he glanced down he realized he was under only one blanket – the others had somehow wound up on the floor. His gaze fell back to his shoulder, completely dwarfed by the giant hand that shook it. He followed the path of the hand up to the arm and into the soft gray eyes of Mr. Maddox. For a moment, he was quite tongue-tied as the memories of the previous day crashed over him again.

Hiccup finally tore his gaze away, swallowing hard as he struggled to think of what to say. And then exhaustion hit him like a hammer. "What time is it?"

"Eight," Mr. Maddox replied. His voice was very soft.

"Right." Hiccup drew in a small breath. He had lain awake for a long time fighting sleep, determined to stay angry with Mr. Maddox, determined not to accept anything from him, no matter how comfortable the bed or nice the room. He was not feeling very awake this morning.

The truth was, he just wasn't good at staying angry with people. He hadn't really felt angry with Mr. Maddox since yesterday morning in the car, where he had exhausted most of his rage, but so determined was he to continue icing the man that he had tried to force himself back into the state from the previous day.

"Hiccup."

The boy slowly lifted his gaze, making a small noise in the back of his throat to assure the other he was listening. Mr. Maddox's eyes were suddenly serious.

"We need to talk." The man appeared to be choosing his words very carefully indeed.

And Hiccup found, however hard he tried, he simply didn't have the strength or the energy to stay angry any longer. Releasing a small sigh, he nodded and climbed out of the bed. "Okay."

"Do you want breakfast?" Mr. Maddox took him by the hand, beginning to lead him down the stairs.

Hiccup shook his head. He wasn't feeling particularly hungry on this morning, either. He wondered exactly what the man was going to talk to him about. Was he going to discuss taking him back to the orphanage? Or maybe he was going to try and make up reasons for why he'd adopted Hiccup? They both knew the truth: it was for the election, and the election alone. Honestly, the man did not need to spare his feelings.

Mr. Maddox halted upon arriving at the kitchen table, taking a seat for himself and motioning for Hiccup to do the same. The boy carefully climbed up onto the seat – with some difficulty, as it was rather high up from the ground and he lacked Mr. Maddox's height. Finally, however, he comfortably faced Mr. Maddox, waiting for the man to begin speaking. He was the one who'd wanted to talk, right?

But there was no sound from either party. Merely staring, and a bit of awkward silence. Hiccup looked down at his hands in his lap. Mr. Maddox coughed. They could both hear the woman next door shrieking at her husband.

Finally, Mr. Maddox cleared his throat. "Um…I just…wanted to say that…I didn't realize…I didn't realize b-being adopted would upset you so much."

Hiccup had never once heard the confident, muscled man falter or stutter before, and so for a second he was surprised. And then the actual meaning of the words hit him and he sighed, poking absently at a groove in the table. "I'm not mad anymore. Really, I'm not," he added hastily, as the man raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. "More than anything, I was just kind of…" _Wondering where you'd gone all week. Wondering why you weren't coming back. Wondering if you knew the truth about my bruise. Wondering if I'd done something wrong. _

With a great effort, Hiccup managed to bury these thoughts, choking them back. "…Overwhelmed. I mean, I hadn't seen you for a week. I assumed the election was over, and you were just coming to tell me that. So, when she said I was being adopted…" _I started wondering why you were so intent on messing with my emotions. _"I guess I lost my temper a little."

Mr. Maddox looked at him.

"Okay, okay, I lost my temper a_ lot_."

Silence fell between them once more, though it was decidedly less awkward.

"I'm just worried for Gustav," Hiccup confessed. "I left him all alone in the orphanage again…"

"He'll be okay, Hiccup."

"But he's got nobody else to look after him! I mean, I was the closest thing he had to anything! I was the only person who even spoke to him or—or listened to him half the time in that orphanage! I was the closest thing to a…a family." For some reason, the word seemed to bring all the tension back in the room.

"Hiccup…" Mr. Maddox began thoughtfully, not looking quite at the boy, really – his gaze flitted instead to the windows, although he seemed completely unaware of the awkward spell that had just been cast the moment the word tumbled off Hiccup's tongue. "You know, I'm sure I could bring you back to see him every couple days or so. You two could still keep in contact while all this…" again, the man seemed to hesitate, seemed to falter. "…All this is…going on," he finished lamely.

"R-really?" Hiccup knew his surprise was showing on his face and could be heard in his voice – he just hadn't expected Mr. Maddox to ever grant him this request. If the man kept his word, he could see Gustav whenever he wanted and help Mr. Maddox win the election…

"Well, don't look so pleased." Mr. Maddox looked surprised, too, though this could have stemmed from Hiccup's reaction. "It's really just driving you out there – you could cover the distance by walking."

"I know, but…" Hiccup was the one looking away this time when he spoke. "Thank you."


	21. Chapter 21

**_Hard Knocks _**

**A/N: Wellllll, this is my newest chapter? It features an OC and some awkward Stoick/Hiccup haha xD Anyway, in rereading this fic and giving it a lot of thought, I realize that this story conspicuously lacks _Annie'_s key components, and not only that, but does not carry what I intended it to, either. I intended this story, at its birth, to be cute. I wanted it to be a cute, charming but also slightly angsty and heartwarming fic, and...it's not. It's not cute. Or charming. Or heartwarming. And that's what I wanted it to be. **

* * *

_Thank you?_

Stoick frowned, momentarily terribly confused. Thank you? For what? Driving him across town? Saving him a lot of walking when that was what a normal, everyday person would do, whether they were running for mayor and trying to look good in the polls or not. He hadn't done anything to warrant such warmly spoken words from the boy and wasn't quite sure how to respond. Yet even as silence threatened to descend upon them once more, Hiccup quickly broke it, tearing his gaze away from the window and bringing it back to the man. "Hey, do you have a shower here?"

"Huh?" The man blinked. Where did the kid _get_ this stuff? "No, I shower in the puddles of rainwater and melted snow you see outside." He was gratified that the boy looked slightly put out and mildly embarrassed. "Of course I have a_ shower_."

Freckled cheeks flushed, Hiccup was nonetheless determined. "Well, can I take a shower, then?"

"You don't need my permission. Go." He tilted his head in the direction of the stairs. "But I'm leaving for work in a few minutes, so you'll be alone here. Will you be okay with that?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine." Hiccup slid out of his chair, before a new thought apparently occurred to him, and he turned swiftly back to the table. "Wait, if I'm going to shower, can I borrow one of your towels?"

"That…kind of comes with the shower, don't you think?"

"Just checking. Thanks." And, like the conversation hadn't just taken a very weird turn, Hiccup turned and scampered up the stairs. Stoick could hear his sneakers pounding on each step.

* * *

Contrary to Stoick's new belief, Hiccup did not prize hygiene, at least not particularly. It was just that he hadn't been able to shower for six days and counting and he really, really didn't want there to be a seventh – as a result, it felt good to step under the warm spray and let the water hit his skin, watching it wash away the layers of dirt and dried sweat that had accumulated there. After seven straight days of cleaning and very little else, these last twenty-four hours felt completely surreal…or maybe that was just how tired he was.

A seed of guilt planted itself slowly in Hiccup's mind – he was here, in a nice apartment, with the mayor-to-be and while there was nothing even akin to affection between them, the man was nice enough. He was a decent man. He had provided Hiccup food all last week, and he'd offered to do the same for however long the boy stayed here. He had given him a nice room, in a nice apartment complex, in a nice part of town, and was letting him shower in a nice bathroom. The other boys in the orphanage were still toiling under the controlling thumb of Mrs. Cambridge, denied every single good thing Hiccup currently held. So, with guilt chewing slightly at the edges of his mind, the boy did not take long in the shower.

Turning off the taps, he heard the unmistakable sound of the apartment door slamming shut, letting him know that he was now alone. Grabbing up his towel and beginning to dry off, Hiccup tried to think of what he would do today, but he was at something of a loss. Pre-Mrs. Cambridge, he would have spent the day playing with Gustav. Post-Mrs. Cambridge? He would have cleaned all day. And to be fair, he could have cleaned the apartment. Heaven knew the place needed it. But if you weighed work against leisure, there could be no question about where the hammer would fall. Besides, he didn't technically need Mr. Maddox to see Gustav. It was true that the man's offer would save him a lot of walking, but the man was probably already long gone by now, so he would just walk the few extra miles.

With this thought in mind, he pulled on his clothes – never mind that they were the ones he'd been wearing the previous night, he had nothing else to change into – and grabbed up the oversized brown jacket, slinging it over his shoulders. Seeing Gustav was a good idea. It would help ease his mind about how his friend was faring, and he would get a chance to see how the other boys were doing as well. No one deserved Mrs. Cambridge.

Decision made, he left the apartment.

But it didn't take long for him to regret this decision. Walking slightly hunched, trudging through ankle-deep snow, arms wrapped around himself to lock in heat as his thin jacket certainly didn't provide any, he became aware that people on the street were looking at him. Ordinarily, this would not have been a particularly upsetting thing. After all, you couldn't really avoid people looking at you. Most people looked at him, though, with contempt and derision. Certainly not…whatever that emotion was, though it sounded nice. And was there a bit of pity mixed in when they stopped to answer? Why were all these people looking at him? He used to be able to slip in and out of places unnoticed. Nobody cared about a foster kid in raggedy clothes.

At one point, there was even an avid reporter whom he hastily escaped by ducking into the pawn shop two streets over, calling a hello to Ferdinand, the grumpy elderly man behind the counter who owned the shop. He and Ferdinand had never been exactly friendly, but they were on okay terms with each other.

Rather proud of his tactic at avoiding the reporter, but content to wait until he was sure she'd lost his scent, Hiccup began walking the aisles, searching for anything of interest, but of course, there was nothing. He had visited this shop every week or so for the past eight or so years. There was really nothing new. There was still the same Chinese vase, the scratched diamond ring… But even as he thought this, eyes scanning the painted portraits for a sign of change, his heart jumped in surprise. Wait, what was that?

For he had just met a gaze that was very familiar: his own. Ferdinand did not sell mirrors here, and there was no reason for him to keep them in the shop. The boy pushed the portraits aside, drawing back almost instantly at the face that greeted him, beaming out at him through the thoroughly abused glass cover. Those were his eyes. Except they weren't set in his face. They belonged to a redheaded young woman, cheeks freckled and flushed, her eyes sparkling like emeralds, aglow with happiness and youth. She looked…she looked…yet even as Hiccup struggled to form thoughts, he knew. She looked like _him_. She looked like the woman Mrs. Hannigan had described for him a million times, _she looked like him_! Or…maybe _he_ looked like _her_? Yes, it would make sense if he took after her…his heart was hurting with how much he hoped.

"Ferdinand." He could not stop the emotions plaguing him suddenly – the hope and the fear and the happiness, the wretched hope and happiness that always,_ always_ came before disappointment. "Ferdinand!" As fast as he could, he raced across the scuffed wooden floor of the shop, coming to a stop at the counter and thrusting the portrait under the man's nose.

"Yeah?" The old man seemed entirely unmoved by the portrait.

"Ferdinand, who gave this to you?"

"Young woman," Ferdinand replied shortly. "She gave me that ring, there, too." He gestured to the diamond ring on the shelf to which Hiccup had never given much thought. "Made a pretty penny off it, which was lucky – I shouldn't have given her nothin' for the portrait."

"When? Where? Did you get her name? Do you remember…did she look like this?"

"Yeah, she looked like that." Ferdinand did not seem to grasp the enormity of his own words. "This was a time ago, mind you, about ten years."

"Can you…give me an exact number?"

"Well, let's see…it was about December…it would have been that December when we got all them blizzards…"

Every December in upstate Ohio had blizzards, but Hiccup was so rapt, so hopeful, that he did not point this out.

"It would have been…December of 2002? Thirteen years ago, I think."

Hiccup's thoughts, feelings, his whole world was spinning around this one, undeniable truth: it all added up. His mother must have been here. She'd sold a ring and a portrait of herself…Finally, finally, he knew what his mother looked like. After so many years of waiting and wanting and wishing, longing for the love of a mother, he'd seen her face.

"Can you tell me more?"

"Eh, my memory's not what it used to be," Ferdinand admitted, shrugging. "She looked different, though – portrait must have been painted some time before she came here, because she was pregnant – very far along, too, by the looks of it. And she was sicker."

The words were like a million rays of sun, chasing away the darkness he'd lived in when it came to knowledge of his parents. It was getting hard to swallow around the lump in his throat, his eyes were stinging, but he wasn't crying. Not yet. "What was this picture…I mean, where was it, then? Shouldn't it have been displayed with the others?"

"I'm not sure how much of a profit I'm gonna make on it to be honest." But as Ferdinand spoke, he gave Hiccup a long, searching look. It didn't take the boy long to realize why. He was clinging to the portrait with all the desperation of a drowning man. He should put it back and leave the shop now, but he…he couldn't. Not when his mother's portrait and ring were in this place, resting on shelves and collecting dust over thirteen years…His eyes stung again.

"Tell you what." Ferdinand's voice was very soft. "Pay what you can when you can."


	22. Chapter 22

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: I'm getting down with the song references for this fic xD well the Annie songs are so goodddd, omg. Especially Tomorrow and It's the Hard-Knock Life. **

* * *

"Wh-what?" It was a conscious effort to pull his gaze away from the portrait – it was just too good to be true, and he was scared to believe it. How could he have stumbled across this portrait after so long spent wishing and looking and hoping against hope that somebody might still be out there for him, somebody who might one day come back for him, somebody who might one day even be capable of loving him… yet he couldn't just take the picture without paying. That was wrong…

"Pay what you can when you can." Ferdinand seemed strangely intent on not looking at Hiccup – he was going around the store, straightening displays that didn't really need straightening, or so it seemed to the boy.

"But I can't…" Hiccup protested, glancing regretfully back at the portrait, following the man over to one of the shelves to put it back.

"I mean it," the old man replied firmly. "You've been in and out of this store for the past eight years, Hiccup – if you could afford to pay, I know you would. I'm not making any money off that thing, anyway, so you might as well take it."

The responsible and moral thing to do would have been to protest, insist on setting the portrait back where he'd found it, waiting until he had enough money to come back and purchase it. But Hiccup was not the picture of responsibility to begin with, and his morals had been very much in doubt these past six days. And that was his mother staring out at him, lips frozen forever in an affectionate smile, one that he could dream was directed at him. So he only held the portrait ever closer, feeling a surge of gratitude for the elderly man who had always seemed grumpy and unapproachable to him. "Thank you, Ferdinand!" He raced for the door, throwing the words behind him as he shouldered it open, barely even aware of the cold stinging his exposed cheeks and hands. Because, with his mother smiling up at him behind the glass, he felt warm, inside and out.

* * *

Only habit could have led Hiccup from the pawn shop to the orphanage. His mind was moving so quickly he could barely keep up with his own thoughts – all he knew was that he was holding a picture of his mother in his hand and nothing could take away his delight. He pushed open the door of the orphanage and slowed considerably when he heard snatches of Mrs. Cambridge's voice – she was talking in that sickly sweet way that made his skin crawl and for an instant, he considered the merits of turning back. Mrs. Cambridge probably wouldn't let him get very far, anyway. But he should at least try.

And in fact, upon rounding the corner and turning into the next room, he realized Mrs. Cambridge held a telephone to her ear.

Her icy blue eyes narrowed when she spotted Hiccup, but with a phone in her hand, there wasn't much she could do. Still, Hiccup mentally gave her ten minutes before she somehow managed to wrap up the call and kick him out of the building, so he hastened his steps, turning instead toward the stairs and beginning to climb them.

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, feeling a pang of guilt as he remembered the boys here – he was going back to the warm apartment with its heated floors while they slept in what could be mistaken for an icebox.

He had to admit, the utter silence of the place disturbed him. There was nothing but the sound of Mrs. Cambridge's voice, floating up to him at his place on the eighth stair up.

Usually the boys could be found everywhere; milling around or talking, bedroom doors thrown wide open, the landing a field of activity at any time of day while they did homework or played games or wrestled around, sometimes even perching on the stairs to talk. They did whatever pleased them, and they did it wherever. It shouldn't be this quiet up here.

But it didn't take long for Hiccup to locate the boys in one of the bedrooms – the door was firmly shut but the boy could hear their quiet voices behind it, dropped to the lowest whisper. It was like they were afraid to be heard.

Mrs. Cambridge's cruel, controlling regime appeared to have increased tenfold in the day that he had been gone. His footsteps, pounding in the hall, sounded very loud to his own ears.

He came to a stop at the bedroom where they had all apparently congregated, pushing the door open and stepping inside with a swift, "Hey, it's me."

And it was like he had never left, like nothing had changed. The boys converged on him to punch him on the shoulder and greet him like it was all in a day's work.

"Wow, the mayor got tired of you already?"

"Don't sound so surprised – look at him, the kid's a headache." The speaker winked to let Hiccup know he was joking, but Hiccup rolled his eyes and sank to the floor.

"I'm just visiting."

Gustav sprang up from one of the beds, throwing himself at the older boy, practically cannon-balling into him with such force that Hiccup actually fell over, but felt a smile tugging at his lips nonetheless, laughter bubbling in his throat, the mere presence of the younger boy a source of endless happiness and delight. How could he ever have allowed himself to think that Mr. Maddox and Mrs. Cambridge could keep them separated?

"Hiccup! I missed you so much!"

"I missed you, too, Gustav," the older boy ruffled the younger's hair, feeling quite winded after the unexpected fall.

"Did Mr. Maddox bring you back? Because if he did, he's crazy! You're the best choice in the whole world and Mr. Maddox is just a doofus!"

"No!" Hiccup hastily explained. "No, I'm just visiting. Mr. Maddox is bringing me back in a few days, though."

"Oh." Gustav calmed considerably before spotting the portrait still hanging half out of the older boy's jacket pocket. "What's this?"

Hiccup bit his lip, feeling indescribably guilty for the happiness still filling his heart. It just wouldn't do to share this with the other boys, who hadn't even come close to finding their parents yet. If he was one step closer than they were, there was no need to share that with them. He shrugged, regretting the lie. "It's nothing, it's just—

"Oh, c'mon!"

"Just tell us what it is!"

"Is it from the mayor scuzz?"

"He's not a—it's not anything!" Hiccup hastily remembered his former argument, abandoning his defense of Mr. Maddox in favor of defense of himself.

"C'mon."

"Tell us!"

"I didn't—you don't—alright." Hiccup slowly set the portrait on the floor, letting the other boys take a good look. He hoped he wouldn't be hated for this.

He watched recognition slowly dawning on their faces, eyes flicking from the portrait to him and back again. Exclamations began flying, but there was not a hint of bitterness, resentment or jealousy in their faces or voices and Hiccup felt himself beginning to relax, lips pulling into a small smile.

"So you really think it's your mom?"

"It's gotta be – look at that face. She looks just like him!"

"You know, Hiccup, your mom was kind of good-looking."

"She is pretty," one of the other boys admitted.

"She's beautiful," Hiccup corrected them, because their words didn't even begin to do the woman in the portrait justice.

"Maybe she was a model," Gustav commented quietly.

"Maybe she was," Hiccup agreed.

"I dunno, she looks like a cook."

"A cook?" One of the other boys asked doubtfully.

"A teacher?"

"A librarian!"

A few minutes passed in companionable debate over what her profession was until Speedifist got up on his knees, shouting, "Artist! Artist! I bet she was an artist!"

Everyone looked to Hiccup for his approval.

"Yes!" He nodded happily, gazing down at the portrait in a state of pure bliss. "An artist." He breathed the last word like a promise.

"She looks like a princess," Gustav whispered.

"Yes." Hiccup nodded again. "She looks exactly like a queen."

"I think she looks strict."

"No, she looks liberal. She wouldn't mind him breaking the rules every now and then."

"This is Hiccup. He follows the rules all the time."

"Are we talking about the same Hiccup here?"

"I wouldn't care what she was," Hiccup interrupted, ignoring them all, unable to tear his gaze from the beautiful portrait. "Just so long as she was mine."

"And just what are you brats doing?"

Mrs. Cambridge's phone call had apparently ended, and none of them had noticed, so focused were they on making up stories about Hiccup's mother. The woman slunk into the room curiously like a panther about to strike, icy blue eyes narrowed almost to slits, arms folded over her chest. For a minute, all of the boys looked at each other, no one quite sure what to say.

"Hiccup found his mother," Speedifist offered finally.

"Maybe."

"He might have."

"I found a picture of her," Hiccup clarified quickly.

Mrs. Cambridge's eyes fixed on Hiccup, widening suddenly. "What?" She bent down to retrieve the picture from the floor, high heels wobbling slightly under the pressure.

Her eyes had always been cold but something suddenly sparked in them, making them feel more comparable to the deepest freeze than merely a thin sheet of ice. She drew up, portrait clutched in her shaking, white-knuckled hand, nostrils flaring, cheeks going thinner and thinner in apparent fury. "And just what are you doing here? You were adopted! Gone! Adios! _Get lost_!" These last two words were spat in such an utter torrent of rage that for a moment, Hiccup sat blinking dumbly, quite lost for words.

Gustav's fingers clutching at his arm lent him strength and he stood his ground. "You know good and well that I'm coming back soon! And there's no harm in visiting, is there? There's no rule against that!"

"Fine, then!" Mrs. Cambridge looked almost mad in her anger. "What do I care? She looks like a slut, anyway!"

Rage flared in Hiccup's stomach, heating his blood to an almost unbearable temperature.

"Good-for-nothing whore. Probably had a little affair and out you popped. Bet she was glad to be rid of you."

Hiccup's ears began to ring. "You don't know her! Don't talk about her that way!"

"And how would you rather I talk about her?"

Hiccup said nothing, for he had a funny feeling that telling her he'd rather not hear her talk at all might earn him another blow.

"Oh, what a wonderful mother! Loved her son so much, she gave him up, because _that's _real love! You'd never know what that was if it slapped you in the face, would you? Poor, unwanted little brat. Give it up, rat. You're never going to find your real parents. _None of you are_." The words were spoken like a death sentence, sending an awful hush through the room. Hiccup was quite sure nothing could break the silence until she did once more – she thrust the portrait away from her and it swung, hitting the nearest bedpost and falling to the floor, glass shattering into broken, irreparable shards.

"No!" Hiccup sped forward, trying frantically to pick up the pieces, to undo the terrible damage she had done.

Mrs. Cambridge watched in cold satisfaction as he picked through the glass with shaking hands. Indeed, they were trembling so badly he cut himself several times, thin lines of blood running down his hands and wrist.

With that done, she fled from the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

"I hate her." Despite his shudders, his voice was quite steady. "I _hate _her! I absolutely _hate_ her! Why is she like this? Why does she treat us like this? _We've never done a thing to her_! Why is she so mean to us? Why is this…why…" But he ran out of words, there was nothing more to be said, yet his rage was too big to be contained. "I hate her!" He threw the words out again, because they were the only ones that could give voice to the torrent of emotions he was currently feeling.

Yet when he looked to the others, expecting support and agreement, he found only emptiness in their dull, hollow eyes.

"She's right," Fishlegs agreed quietly. "I'm never going to find my real parents. None of us are."

"But…but…" Hiccup wanted to say something, to argue against this, but the other boys were nodding in silent, hopeless agreement. How could it have come to this? Mrs. Cambridge must have wreaked more havoc upon the other boys than even he'd realized. He simply could not find the words to say – and even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered, he thought as he trudged dejectedly back to the apartment that afternoon. None of the boys were willing to listen to him.

Why did Mrs. Cambridge hate them so much? Why did she hate him specifically, when he'd never done anything to her? Why was she so intent on breaking his spirit? Why had she broken the portrait? Why did she hate him? Why was Mr. Maddox still pretending to care? Why had he disappeared off the face of the earth and then adopted him? What had he done _wrong_? Why was this his life, this world of hard knocks he found himself stuck in?

Where was the sun, and why had it abandoned him when it was supposed to come out?


	23. Chapter 23

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: New chapter? Sorta? For some reason, it was a really hard chapter to write at first, but after a bit, it turned fun xD Anyway, I was thinking of renaming this story - along with my thoughts of redoing it - but so far I've got no other titles except the possibility of 'Hang On Til Tomorrow' or even 'Please Come Get Your Baby'. But that second one sounds too hopeless. And the first one soundsssss I don't know. I like the title I have right now, but at the same time, it's painfully generic and bland and just blehhhh. What should I do, bros and broettes?**

**Also, I was thinking of titling the chapters, too. Because then every chapter could be titled a lyric from one of the songs. Obviously, chapter 18 would have to be 'I know you're gonna like it' but the others...I'm at something of a loss. Anyway, just tell me what you think in the review section, both about the possibility of a different title and the possibility of chapter titles. And tell me what you think of the chapter, please. Reviews are love, and I can't believe I hit 200! Just gahhhhh :D I didn't ever see this story going anywhere, so to see it hitting 200 already makes me so freaking happy :D**

**P.S: Sorry about the 'taking it down' thing. I uploaded the wrong version -.- Also, I called him a dog catcher instead of animal control because, in the original Annie film, Annie saves her dog, Sandy, from a dog catcher. I understand they're called animal control now, and they've got a better...I don't want to say reputation, but yeah, reputation, they've got a better reputation than dog catchers, but in the media and stuff dog catchers are mean men who chase after dogs and swing nets and stuff, so I figured it'd work. **

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With these thoughts haunting him, and the broken glass shards from his mother's shattered portrait rattling hopelessly in his jacket pocket, and with the sky above him never looking grayer or darker, it was no surprise that all the staring on the walk back to the apartment didn't bother him quite so much as it had on the walk from. He couldn't fathom why it had annoyed or upset him to begin with, when clearly there was so much more to be upset about today.

"The sun will come out tomorrow," he whispered, trying to convince himself of the truth of his own words. Wasn't this the same thing he'd said to Gustav when Mrs. Cambridge had first come to the orphanage? Things had to get better. It wasn't like they could get any worse, right?

The apartment complex was not yet within his sights when he first heard it, the noise. He was fairly certain most people would have missed it on the crowded and loud Ohio street as they were, but he still managed to catch it, the soft, faint sound somewhere between a whimper and a pained moan. Pained. Yes, that was definitely what they sounded like. And now he could hear heavy, rapid breathing, panting, almost, like they were running out of air, or like every breath was an effort.

Hiccup paused, stood stock-still on the street, cocking his head in an attempt to hear better. This was immediately foiled, as the people rushing around him didn't quit talking, and the beeping of a hundred cell phones completely canceled out any noise. Come to think of it, how had he heard it the first time? And everyone rushed around him like a relentlessly raging river, sending him rather nasty glares when he failed to get out of their way. Rolling his eyes, the boy stepped quickly into an alley between two dirty brick buildings, straining his ears for the sound again. Okay, come to think of it, that whimper thing hadn't sounded exactly human, and he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of trying to locate who or what had produced it.

Of course, it wasn't anything dangerous, he hastily told himself. Wild animals did not stray to large cities in Ohio, where sidewalks were packed with people and streets were clogged with cars. He peered out from between the two buildings again, still trying to locate the noise amidst the people talking and laughing loudly around him, and it occurred to him that perhaps he was moving farther away than closer to. It was possible, at least. He should probably enter the sidewalk again, go against the flow of people, and—

Oh, God, there it was. And oh, God, it was coming from right behind him.

The hairs on the back of his neck tingled, standing straight up as he swiveled slowly around, already cautioning himself not to scream immediately, because it was probably harmless, a tiny kitten, or…or…a huge, black dog, lying docilely like he'd merely collapsed in the alleyway and decided, hey, this will make a pretty good place to rest up. The canine would have been a handsome creature, if the sleek ebony coat was anything to go on, yet that very coat was part of what made the dog so horrible to look at. The black fur hung off in huge folds, like it had been made to fit another, even bigger dog and he was even bald in patches, like somebody had tried to cut off his fur and given up before they'd gotten very far. Beneath the dark fur coat, the dog's ribs were clearly visible; Hiccup could count at least three on each side, and the poor thing looked half-starved. He was not making any moves that signified that he found Hiccup a nice edible substitute for the last meal that had escaped his clutches, which made the boy relax marginally. If anything, the poor creature merely seemed like a broken-down echo of what a dog should really be. The animal made a half-hearted attempt to stand, as if to defend his territory against a possible intruder, and almost immediately, Hiccup realized why he'd been making such a pained whine. The boy couldn't tell what the problem was just from looking at it, but the dog was clearly favoring his back left leg, as if afraid putting too much weight on it would make him collapse on the ground again. Perhaps that was why he'd collapsed the first time.

Despite the obvious injury, the dog did manage to stand, but instead of trying to fend the boy off, he actually cocked his head, as if he were merely curious. Intelligent dark eyes, looking almost green in the light (but that was crazy, Hiccup told himself – he was pretty sure dogs couldn't have green eyes) searched the boy's body hopefully, as if they were old friends who hadn't seen each other for a very long time.

Hiccup slowly knelt down next to the dog, hoping that this gesture would make the creature feel less threatened, and he would sink back down to his original position. His leg appeared to be paining him, and the boy didn't want him to suffer because he was afraid of what would happen if he gave into weakness.

He cautiously seated himself on the wet ground, feeling half-melted snow immediately soaking into his torn jeans. Shivering slightly and pulling his jacket closer around himself, the boy struggled to think what to say. And then it occurred to him that this was a dog, and he was pretty sure dogs only understood the bare minimum of human speech. Still, the way the animal looked at him suggested that this one was far smarter than that.

Hiccup held his hand out first, his palm flat so he posed no threat, watching as the dog hesitantly leaned closer. A wet nose quickly found the inside of his hand, sniffing deeply. It tickled a bit, but the boy refused to back away until the animal was convinced of his trustworthiness. Indeed, after a few moments of inspecting him, the dog did seem convinced of that; he slowly sprawled back down into his former position, and the boy could swear he even heard a little sigh, like the canine was relieved that he was getting to relax again.

Hiccup patted the dog gently, feeling the thick, silky black fur between his fingers, checking the furry neck for a collar. Nothing. This, coupled with the injury and near starvation, was enough to seal it in his mind: the poor animal must be a stray. _Like him_. The thought slipped into his mind unbidden, reminding him forcibly of all the terrible things Mrs. Cambridge had said to him that morning. He wasn't ever going to find his real parents, she'd said. She'd told him to give it up. She'd told him he wouldn't know what real love was if it slapped him on the face. And maybe she was right, but the least he could do for this dog was to give him something to eat.

And take him to a vet, but as he currently didn't possess any money, that would have to wait.

"Alright, bud," he stood from his position, looking down at the dog, "you stay here, and I'll be back for you. I'll be back with some food, and some water, and—

"There you are!"

The rough voice startled Hiccup, and the words puzzled him. He ran through a million possibilities in the time it took to lift his head, but discarded each one. The only person he knew who might actually be searching for him was Mr. Maddox, but the man had no reason to…besides, the voice didn't sound like his. Maybe it was that nosy reporter lady?

But no, it was a man he'd never seen before, jogging down the alley toward them in a pale brown uniform, an insignia stitched on his shirt in gold. Instantly, the dog was all business again, lowering his head, beginning to growl. Though the creature could clearly defend himself, he backed away slightly, edging toward Hiccup. It took only a second, and a glance from the animal at his side to the logo on the man's shirt, to understand what was going on. _Dog catcher. _Hiccup didn't know what happened to the dogs who were taken to the pound – didn't know anything about pounds at all, except some people said they put the unwanted animals under. If they were cruel enough to do that, would they be kind enough to look after an injured dog? Hiccup wondered nervously. He decided to intervene. "Excuse me, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" The man barked at him, tone unfriendly. "I've been chasing this stupid thing all over hell and half of Berk all morning, and now I finally find him again!"

_Chasing? _He was making the dog run from him on an injured leg? And more than that, what had he done to scare the dog into running in the first place? And really, he might be taking quite a liking to this animal, but he'd better stop sheltering behind Hiccup now, otherwise this man was really going to think…and with a start, Hiccup realized that maybe that's what the dog wanted the man to think.

Of course, that was ridiculous. Hiccup didn't know much about dogs, but he was fairly certain they just weren't capable of that kind of level of high reasoning. Still, the fact remained, there was something different about this dog. So he glared up at the man, stepping slightly in front of the animal to shield him from the man's view. "And just what are you doing, chasing my dog?"

"Your dog?" The man snorted disbelievingly. "So tell me why I've been looking for the mutt, huh?"

"He got out last night," Hiccup recognized how icy his voice was becoming, but did nothing to stop this. "See, I accidentally left the door open and he—

"If he's your dog, why doesn't he have a collar?"

"Look at me!" Hiccup gestured to himself: his oversized brown jacket, stained, long-sleeved green shirt, torn jeans. "Do I look like I could afford a collar?"

There was something slightly distrustful in the man's gaze now, but he appeared to be turning Hiccup's story over in his mind, considering whether to believe it or not. "So, he really is your dog, you say?"

"Yes," Hiccup nodded gratefully. "He ran away from me last night, like I said, and I have no idea how he injured his leg, but he must have seen you and gotten spooked, so he took off and hid here. H-he's normally harmless." Okay, so only that last part was a lie and it wasn't a total lie. He just wasn't sure if the dog was harmless or not.

"Hmm." The man straightened up. "Alright. You were taking him home?"

"Yep," Hiccup nodded, shifting from foot to foot before realizing the man was waiting for him to move. He was waiting for him, to see if he was actually going to take the dog home. _Oh, no. _

He could only imagine what Mr. Maddox would have to say, but he took a few steps forward before remembering the actual dog, turning and motioning for the creature to follow him. "Come on…" he trailed off, realizing that, if he let on that he hadn't actually named him, the game would totally be up. Frantic eyes searched shop fronts for an appropriate name, settling firstly on an orthodontist's door, lending him inspiration. "Tooth…" his eyes sought a grocery store this time, finding the words 'pay less'. "Less," he finished lamely. "C'mon, Tooth…less." God, that sounded so awkward. Well, it would have to work, for the moment. Besides, the dog responded to the name, limping painfully after the boy, so Hiccup figured it would work for now. It wasn't like he was actually planning on keeping the dog, anyway.

He quickened his pace the instant they were out of that alleyway, privately worrying that the dog catcher might cotton on that he'd been tricked before they were a safe distance away. He also worried that the apartment complex might not allow pets, but as nobody stopped him when he entered the lobby, he figured it was okay and walked straight to the elevator, hitting the button for the top floor and stepping immediately inside, fidgeting nervously as the machinery around him creaked and groaned. The dog let out a little whine.

The instant the doors dinged open, the boy raced along the hallway, flushed and out of breath, hands grasping eagerly at the doorknob, ready to finally shut out the rest of the nightmarish world and…oh, perfect. He didn't have a key.


	24. Chapter 24

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: NO FOLKS TO SPEAK OF SOOOOO**

**IT'S THE HARD-KNOCK ROW WE HOEEEEEEEEEE **

**Ahem. Sorry 'bout that. Listening to the 1999 version of the Annie soundtrack today. :3 I really like that version of It's the Hard-Knock Life, though I do also like the 2014 version. And the 1982 version is okay, I guess. If we're going by the redheaded Annies, I like 1999 better, but 2014 is my favorite so far, I think :3 I hope they do other film adaptions, I hope it so hard...**

**Anyway, please enjoy the chapter! Thank you guys so much for your reviews and feedback about the possibility of a different title and chapter titles. I'll probably just keep this title cuz I'm lazy :P If I did do chapter titles, though, what could the first chapter be titled? **

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Exhausted.

If you'd asked Stoick Maddox for one word to describe himself at the current moment, that was what it would be. Between his work for his company and work for the election, between all the thoughts he'd rather not think and all the emotions he'd rather not feel, it had been a long, stressful, tiring day and possibly the last thing in the world he wanted to see was…this.

Indeed, the scene was so unbelievably odd that for a minute, Stoick could only stare, trying to make sense of it. Hiccup was curled up on his side, fast asleep in the hallway, just a few feet from the door, but even stranger was the huge, skinny black Lab serving as his pillow, back left leg positioned awkwardly, as though it had been paining him. It was as if Hiccup had had every intention of reentering the apartment but decided at the last second that this would be too much effort. And, upon closer inspection of his canine friend, Stoick realized it was indeed the dog he'd seen wandering the streets these past couple days. Had Hiccup picked up a stray? There were so many things wrong with this scene, Stoick didn't even think he could articulate them all.

Of course, he could just go into his apartment, save his questions for a later date…but no. With Hiccup, it was always best to deal with things the moment they occurred.

Ruddy face the picture of reluctance, Stoick slowly knelt down, suppressing a sigh of resignation. He had pretty much signed up for this when he'd signed those adoption papers, taking guardianship of Hiccup. He carefully shook the tiny shoulder, hoping the boy would be able to pull some amazing explanation out of the hat for everything.

Sleepy green eyes had scarcely blinked open when the barrage of questions started.

"What are you doing? Why do you have a dog here? What is…I don't…what are you doing sleeping in the hallway?"

"What do you mean?" Hiccup demanded incredulously, sitting up on one hand and using the other to smooth down his flyaway auburn hair. "You woke me up at eight this morning – of course I was going to fall asleep!"

"You wake up at seven every morning!"

Now Hiccup looked bemused. "No, I don't."

"Wait…you…but…school?"

"Oh, that." Hiccup nodded. "Mrs. Hannigan taught us herself at the orphanage. She didn't have a lot of time or materials, but she thought that was preferable to…well…" the boy dropped his gaze to his knees before abruptly picking the sentence back up, speaking in a hard voice. "Mrs. Cambridge isn't really doing much teaching." Stoick noticed that he'd slipped a hand into his jacket pocket.

The man wanted to pursue the subject – Hiccup had just practically admitted their substitute head was neglecting the other boys, and Stoick was certain Social Services could get her on that alone – but the boy stood up, stretching and another question leapt to the forefront of his mind.

"Well, why didn't you enter the apartment, at least?"

"No key," Hiccup ran his fingers through his hair again.

"We're rectifying that," Stoick told him as he pulled out his own key, but yet another problem made itself known…in the shape of a huge, furry, slobbery Labrador. As he opened the apartment door and the dog began to limp faithfully after the boy, the man knew he'd have to put his foot down – now. "Why do you have a dog here?"

"Oh, him? Nearly forgot about that, actually." Hiccup gave the canine an affectionate scratch behind the ears. "Reminds me, do you know any vets that might look at him with no—

"No."

"What?"

"Absolutely not. I am not taking in a dog. He has to go."

"He's a stray!" Hiccup seemed to draw unconsciously closer to the animal of which he spoke. "You can't just pick him up and throw him away! He's got feelings, you know!"

"Exactly. Which is why you're getting rid of him now, before he can get used to it or attached to you or…or…"

"You can't just throw him out!" Hiccup objected angrily. "Look at him! He's starving and he's injured, and they're trying to take him to the pound! You can't do that!"

"I can't have a dog here!" Stoick argued. "It's completely un—wait." Gray eyes narrowed in suspicion when they fixed on the freckled face. Sure, those big green eyes looked innocent on the surface, but as the truth began piecing itself together in Stoick's mind, he knew Hiccup was anything but. "How would you know they were trying to take him to the pound?"

The boy looked suddenly shifty.

"Hiccup?" The man pressed.

"Well, I couldn't just stand by and let that happen!" Hiccup's defense came hastily. "They put animals under at that place! What was I supposed to do?"

"Let them do their job?"

"Well, I couldn't, alright? So I…I lied. I told him Toothless belongs to me."

"_Toothless_?"

"Look, it was a pressured moment, okay? It kind of sticks, anyway. I like it."

"No, no, no." Stoick shook his head, holding his hands up in a 'stop-right-there' motion. "We are not naming this thing, too."

"He's already named," Hiccup informed him. "And like I said, he really needs a vet."

"No, he needs out. Of this apartment. Right now."

"Is there a rule against pets in this place, or something?"

"There is now."

"He's a stray! C'mon, Mr. Maddox, he's got nowhere to go, and if they catch him again, he'll be taken to the pound for sure! Please, can't we at least take him to the vet or something?"

"Hiccup—

"C'mon, he's not very big!"

"Hiccup, he's the biggest canine I've ever seen in my life."

"Well…maybe if he was, like, an elephant, or something, we'd have an issue but—

Stoick sent him a swift look. "Elephants? Hiccup, we are not starting a _circus_!"

"I'm not saying—really! Please, c'mon…seriously…at least a vet? Please? That's it, just…just to make sure his leg is okay." Hiccup knelt down next to the animal scratching him under the chin, eliciting small sounds of adoration from the dog. Whatever Stoick tried to do, it was clear that the dog absolutely loved the boy. If he tried to do anything to change that…

"Alright," the man relented at last, "he can stay—

"Yes!"

"—until we find a home for him."

Perhaps Hiccup realized this was the best he was going to get, because he gave in without a fight. "Just so long as I know he's safe."

"C'mon," Stoick more sighed the words than said them. "We're taking him to the vet."


	25. Chapter 25

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Hi, everyone! I'm back, with a new chapter. I went to the bookstore again yesterday and I MuST BE SToPPED. I got like, six new books, it was insane xD and I scored a really awesome Harry Potter journal. I love bookstores so much, man. I especially love the one I go to, because it always smells like coffee and magic and information and just ughhhh. I feel like Fishlegs in Race to the Edge episode 1: "There is no greater treasure than knowledge!" xD xD xD Yep, when I first saw the movie, I wanted to be like Hiccup or Astrid, only to realize years later that I'm Fishlegs. That is the way the cookie crumbles, apparently xD Oh, also, as I type this, I'm listening to the 2014 version of the Annie soundtrack. And the night is young, and this is written, so I bid you adieu, I guess? **

**(Oh, PS, I also got a new book while I was out today, I confess, there is my confession, I'm sorry I told you I must be stopped. But most of the books were fantasy, which is my favorite genre, and the books I got last time I went to the bookstore were all research. Like for fics and stuff. So I can write my stories more accurately. I even got a book on the Vikings! :D There really is no greater treasure than knowledge, I swear...) **

* * *

True night had fallen by the time they exited the veterinarian's office, pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the nearest supermarket (Hiccup wanted to buy Toothless some dog food, to be sure he'd get a meal tonight, and that it would be a meal safe for a canine to eat). Though this was now the least of his ever-growing list of problems, Stoick still could not fathom why anyone would choose to name a dog 'Toothless', and even worse, that the dog actually responded to it. Nonetheless, the animal limped faithfully after Hiccup wherever he went, indicating that he'd already decided to attach himself to the boy, at least for now.

Upon being asked to stop for dog food on the way home, Stoick had so nearly given a sarcastic and completely humorless response – he wasn't precisely sure what he would have said, but it would probably have been something along the lines of, _sure, why don't we visit the whole damn city! _– but one look at the boy's earnest green eyes and he simply couldn't. Even now, as he reluctantly pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine, he couldn't explain exactly how Hiccup managed to do that, to just shut that side of him down so completely, the side he had learned to master, so as to never show to any voters. But Hiccup was not a voter, or…or anything, really, anybody that Stoick had to impress. Why was he so hesitant to speak harshly around the boy?

The trip into the supermarket was hasty - Stoick barely even glanced at the chosen bag of dog food as he hefted it over to the counter, though he saw out of the corner of his eye that it appeared to have dark blue packaging. Once back inside the Thunderdrum, Stoick turned to look at the boy in the passenger seat, Toothless sprawled out happily on the teen's legs. This appeared to be putting Hiccup in some discomfort, but he didn't complain, just scratched the dog happily behind the ears.

"Do you want to grab something out?" Stoick ventured cautiously. "I mean, it would take care of dinner at least, but if you don't want…"

Hiccup shook his head in disbelief. "You expect me to complain about_ takeout_?"

"I'll take that as a very enthusiastic yes," the man told him.

Hiccup nodded. "You do that."

* * *

Upon arriving back at the apartment, they were immediately confronted with a new problem. Stoick did not have a dog dish. Or a water bowl. Or anything at all, really, that could be loosely construed as anything for a canine to eat out of. Throughout all that had happened that day, this was certainly not the biggest problem the man had ever faced, but it was beginning to seem downright insurmountable until he wrestled an old orange Halloween bowl with black pumpkins dotting the rim from the back of his pantry. He suspected the bowl might have come from someone else, because although he did not prize style very highly, even he could immediately see that it was the ugliest dish he'd ever seen. He was quite happy to give it to the dog.

Hiccup busied himself with pouring the food into the bowl, and then giving Toothless some water to lap, and while he dealt with that, Stoick walked over to the table at the far end of the room, taking the two individually wrapped hamburgers out of the bag, setting one by Hiccup's place and one by his own. And while he liked to think of himself as fairly easygoing about messes, germs, bacteria, that sort of thing, when Hiccup walked over to the table himself, the smell of muddy dog clinging to him like a second skin, the man found he had to protest.

"Wash your hands."

"What?" Hiccup gaped at him, as if personal hygiene was not even a concept in his brain.

"You heard me. You were all over that dog, and he's been running around the streets these past few days. You have no idea what kind of things he's picked up."

"But why do I have to wash my hands?" Hiccup protested, as if the very idea was unendurable to him.

"Because you're supposed to wash your hands before you eat anyway," Stoick said. "Whether you've been around a dog or not." He was growing tired of the questions.

"You _are_?"

"Yes. So go. Do it."

Hiccup looked baffled, but he jogged over to the sink anyway, sticking his hands under the spray for the space of a blink before withdrawing them.

"Use soap," Stoick called, before the boy could waste his time attempting to rejoin him at the table.

A long sigh was his only answer. Stoick glanced back to see if the boy was following his orders – and thus noticed the exaggerated eye roll.

"I saw that," he snapped, and Hiccup didn't even have the grace to look sheepish. But Stoick noted that this time when he turned the faucet on again, he picked up the soap bottle too, and squeezed some out into his hand.

This time, when he made his way over to the table again, Stoick did not send him away – however, when the boy began to eat, he tore into his meal with such savagery that the man was reminded forcibly of the dog lapping up water behind him. In fact, he finished eating so fast Stoick rather thought he'd more inhaled his food than really eaten it. His drink remained untouched, and he pushed himself out of his chair, hastily thanking the man for the food and motioning for the dog to follow him. "C'mon, Toothless."

"Is he going to sleep up there with you?" Stoick asked doubtfully.

"First you question my hygiene habits and now this?" Hiccup pretended to look insulted. Or…maybe he really was. Either way…

"Those habits needed questioning," Stoick told him.

"What_ever_."


	26. Chapter 26

_**Hard Knocks**_

**A/N: PLEASE READ**

**I've come to a definite conclusion about what to do with this story now. I'll finish this, and I'll leave it up, don't worry - but afterward, I'm going to see the movie, and redo it. I'll rewrite it and follow the original story better, and hopefully, with luck, I'll actually get down to the heart of the story with the second version. I'll leave this version up for people who like it - several people have told me they like this a lot, but I really want to write an actual Hiccup-as-Annie AU. Not an annoyingly-optimistic-orphan-boy-finds-a-home AU. Which is...what this is. And Annie was optimistic, make no mistake - but not like Hiccup is. Hiccup is just different in this AU, and I don't like it. So I'm rewriting, but leaving this one up.**

**That being said, this title is staying the same, and chapters are to remain untitled. I'll save all the fanciful song lyrics for the next version.**

* * *

The previous evening, Hiccup had retired early to his bedroom, black dog in tow, faithfully tagging along, tail swishing over the steps as he slowly conquered them, limping noticeably due to his leg.

Shortly thereafter, Stoick had cleared the table and set up on his laptop, beginning to work – but not for his company or the election.

Every time he'd seen Hiccup and Toothless interacting that day, he'd felt an increased sense of urgency in the way the dog followed him everywhere, waited for him, tail wagging the closer the boy drew. It was evident that, if Stoick didn't intervene soon, Hiccup, despite all his protests to the opposite, would get terribly attached to the animal, and this left it up to the man to prevent that happening. If Hiccup did start caring for Toothless, Stoick knew it would be unbearable for the boy to say goodbye to the dog. And though purebred Labradors were worth quite a lot, said to be friendly, high-energy dogs with a sense of adventure, so far the man hadn't really found anybody he was really leaning toward. He had to find a good home for the dog, somewhere nice and stable, because Hiccup cared so much about the animal that Toothless couldn't just be passed off to any old owner.

And in all the time that he'd been sitting up at the kitchen table, scouring the internet, Hiccup had not exited his bedroom. Nor had he made any noise. He must be asleep, Stoick thought to himself.

That was what he thought until the next morning, when the boy in question stumbled downstairs, hair a rumpled auburn mess, green eyes squinted half-shut against the too-bright sunlight, more feeling his way around the kitchen instead of actually walking. Finally collapsing onto one of the stools at the counter, he stifled a huge yawn.

"Do you want anything for breakfast? I've got cereal, and some sort of…" Stoick opened the cabinet above the stove, pulling down the box. "I think they're some kind of pastry," he confessed. "I wasn't really looking when I bought them."

Hiccup shrugged. "Alright. Pass 'em, I'll eat one."

"Your sacrifice will be remembered," the man responded dryly.

The boy gave a tired, crooked grin. "It'd better be."

Then, taking a thoughtful bite of the proffered breakfast food, he wrinkled his nose and added, "This tastes like crap."

"I didn't realize I'd have a kid in my home when I bought them," Stoick told him. "Forgive me for overlooking my breakfast foods."

"Wait." Hiccup eyed the pastry apprehensively before slowly setting it down on the counter in front of him. "How long ago did you buy these?"

"I don't know. A couple…I don't…maybe…I don't…"

"Was the weather warm when you last bought them by any—Mr. Maddox!" The boy grabbed up the box, staring at it in wide-eyed horror. "This is a _Halloween-themed_ food!"

"I was in a hurry! I forgot they were in there! Don't look at me like that!"

Shaking his head, the boy set the box back down. "I can't believe you've had these since October, and you haven't even noticed. No wonder they taste bad. They're old."

"I'm sure they're not that—

Hiccup broke off a piece and handed it to the man. Stoick hesitated before steeling himself and putting the bite in his mouth – and immediately wishing he hadn't. Fighting the urge to spit it out because he had some pride, he forced himself to swallow it with as few chews as possible, to rid himself of the taste quickly.

"No, no, we're done. You're not eating that. That's way too old," he forestalled the boy as Hiccup readied himself for another bite.

"It's not a problem, Mr. Maddox," he said earnestly. "I'll eat whatever you give me, really. I don't mind."

"Apparently, you do, because you griped and complained about this." Stoick gestured to the box.

"Hey, that's because anyone could do better! Even me!" Hiccup hastily defended himself.

"Even you?"

"I'm serious. Give me a couple eggs and a blender, and I can make a health drink that tastes better than this."

"I'm fresh out of eggs," the man told him, "but you, with no previous cooking experience? I don't think I trust you in my kitchen."

"I don't trust_ you_ in your kitchen."

"This is getting personal!" Stoick retorted as he plugged up the toaster.

"What are you doing?" Hiccup hopped off his stool, coming around the other side of the counter to see the man fiddling with the appliance.

"I'm making toast," Stoick responded. "It's not the most glamorous meal in the world, but you're not eating something that's been in my cabinet since October."

"Fair enough," Hiccup told him. "But I really don't need this, honestly."

"You'll want to eat something more substantial than that," Stoick gestured to the pastry box as he talked before dropping two pieces of bread in the toaster slots and pulling the slider all the way down. "I'm taking you out to get your key today."

"What key?" a baffled Hiccup questioned.

"Here," Stoick responded, slightly unhelpfully.

"My key _here_?"

Stoick nodded.

"I thought you were bluffing about that," the boy admitted.

"Why would I be bluffing?"

"The election…?" He said it questioningly. "Aren't you going to kick me out afterward?"

Stoick couldn't help but flinch at the choice of words. "Hiccup—

"It's okay, Mr. Maddox, call it what it is." Hiccup had evidently discovered a piece of paper the man had left lying on the counter, because he was picking it up, folding and unfolding and refolding it with remarkable speed. "I'll be gone soon. But it'll be nice while it lasts." He sent the man a quick, tight smile that did not entirely mask a different emotion – something sadder, wistful.

In the few moments that it took the toast to pop back up, there was a thick silence in which the man and the boy both barely breathed. Hiccup finally, as Stoick loaded the toast onto a plate, dropped his gaze to the paper in his hand, and the man could swear he let out a small breath, like a sigh of disappointment.

"Here." Stoick carefully set the plate down on the counter, in front of the stool Hiccup had chosen to sit in that morning. "Do you want butter?"

"Yes, please. That'd be good." Hiccup slid onto the barstool again, and he buttered his toast and tore off the "crust" and didn't listen when Stoick told him there was no crust, it was all crust now that it'd been toasted, and the boy laughed or flashed a smile in all the right moments, but by the end of it, Stoick couldn't help but notice that when he stood to throw the toast away, none of it had actually been eaten.


	27. Chapter 27

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: PLEASE READ **

**As a warning, Stoick refers to tattooed, pierced teenagers as "riffraff" in this chapter. Personally, I see nothing wrong with people like that. I really don't care whether you're inked up to your eyeballs, or you've got a hundred piercings. I don't care. (I look at some piercings and I'm like holy shit, why would anyone do that oh my god that looks so painful, but I don't care whether other people do it.) It's your body. Not mine. I just have a head canon that Stoick can be very judgmental when it comes to kids like that. (Ooh, now I need pierced modern-AU Hiccup...) **

**Secondly, I would like to formally apologize, because - I saw the new Annie. Let's just be honest. I'm being honest. I saw the new Annie. I couldn't wait any longer. It was amazing. But I still have a plan for this story, and that isn't changing. But seriously, guys, do not listen when people put it down because it is absolutely amazing, and I love it, and it is so worth watching! Except nobody else I know liked 'I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here'. xD (I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE IT, YES, YES, I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE IT HERE, YES, YES, I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE IT HEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEE) **

**Also, I have this mental image of modern-AU Stoick with a kid in his house, and it's just so funny to imagine him fumbling around trying to look after the kid, especially when it's Hiccup xD Just. YES. Please drop me a couple reviews! (Look at us, 229, oh my gosh...!) **

* * *

Stoick Maddox was, as stated before, not a particularly observant person; an attentive, eager listener when he thought that what was being said mattered, yes; excellent at grasping the bigger picture, and thus often skillfully predicting possible outcomes to situations, yes; but it was the tiny details that tripped him up, the small and seemingly unimportant things that he never thought to notice.

So it was a stroke of luck indeed, he knew, when he happened to glance over at the red-haired kid on his couch, shoving socked feet into shoes that appeared a bit too small to be comfortable. He frowned at this observation, but ultimately might have shrugged it off had he not seen an unidentifiable stain on the boy's green shirt – sure, it was mostly hidden by the thin jacket, but it was still there, still noticeable, and Stoick could only imagine what people would say if the child he'd recently adopted went out looking like…like that. "Hiccup, would you change your clothes when you're finished with that?"

Hiccup didn't look up from lacing his sneakers. "No."

Stoick mastered himself before he sighed, but couldn't control the frustration at the words; the kid could be stubborn about the stupidest things, really. "Those pants have holes, and your shirt—

"Sorry." Hiccup shrugged, sounding extremely un-sorry, and not at all sympathetic. "Can't." He rose from the couch, dusting the discussed jeans off – like that was going to make them look any better, the man thought sarcastically to himself.

"What do you mean, you can't?" Irritation pricked at Stoick, and he more snapped the words than said them.

"I don't have anything else." He stated the words as calmly and simply as if they were accepted fact; turning to walk around the coffee table, he didn't see the man's expression of surprise.

Stoick would be the first to admit he'd never exactly lived his whole life in the lap of luxury, either, but he still found it hard to believe that the clothes on his back were the only ones Hiccup owned – and how had nobody noticed this before? He meant to ask this, but before he could, Hiccup caught his eye.

"Oh, c'mon, it's not my fault," he complained, apparently horribly misreading the expression on the man's face. "I actually used to have a pair of jeans, real nice ones, too, only little hole in the thigh – found them in the trash, too, so they didn't cost one cent – but then a seam burst…" He used his finger to trace a line from the ankle to the inside of the thigh, obviously trying to give Stoick a better idea of the damage. "So Mrs. Hannigan said they were unacceptable, and I had to get rid of them." He rolled his eyes, as if he couldn't imagine why a pair of pants that left one's leg exposed to the elements had been deemed unsuitable. "So she said she was going to buy me a new pair to make up for them, but that was last spring, and money got really tight around that time, and I never brought it up, and then she got sick…"

"You should have told her," Despite his best intentions, Stoick knew his tone was coming out scolding. "Once you had the opportunity, you should have—

"I told you," Hiccup interrupted, "money was tight. 'Sides, everyone needs something there, okay? Everyone goes without sometimes, and this time, it's me." He shrugged, like it didn't bother him in the slightest.

"Well, you've been going without since spring," Stoick pointed out, struggling this time to keep the bite in his voice in check. "That's not good."

"It's no big deal," Hiccup responded defensively. "I told you, it's not my fault! We all have to make do! Now, are we going or not?"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Stoick demanded roughly.

"Oh, yeah. That would have worked. I hardly know you, Mr. Maddox. I'm not going to go around telling random strangers that I'm poor."

"No, Hiccup, I meant why didn't you tell me you were out of clothes?"

"Because I'm not."

"Excluding those…those…_things _that I _guess_ pass for an outfit, Hiccup, you are out of clothes. Why didn't you say something?"

Hiccup blinked, apparently uncomprehending. "Because I don't know you. I just said that."

"You know me well enough to be living in my apartment, eating my food, and sleeping in my extra bedroom," Stoick pointed out. "Which means you know me well enough to know that when you need something, you can just ask."

Hiccup's mouth, which he had previously opened for a witty retort, snapped shut again, and for a long second, he just stared at the man, looking so small and helpless and confused that he seemed suddenly much younger than thirteen. "You mean…you mean…had I _asked_, you would have…?"

"For the last time, this isn't a Charles Dickens novel," Stoick responded, a little impatiently. "Of course, I would have. That goes for everything else, too – if you can think of anything you need, don't hesitate to ask." He jerked his head in the direction of the door. "Now, c'mon. We'll make a stop somewhere and pick you up a couple outfits today, enough to last you."

"You don't have to do this. Really." But the boy looked so relieved at the prospect that Stoick knew he was making the right call. Then the child glanced at the carpet, a flush rising in the freckled face as he apparently struggled to find the right words. "I'm…I mean…uh…thanks." He lifted his head just long enough to smile at the man.

A hint of unease pricked Stoick. Was he giving the kid the wrong idea? Hiccup seemed very thankful, considering it was only clothes…and Gobber had said it'd be giving him the wrong impression…maybe Gobber had been right…no, Hiccup was a smart kid. He knew how the world worked. He was too bright to believe…but even so, just in case… "We can't have you walking around in those clothes," Stoick threw the words out, half-hoping Hiccup would not hear them. "People would talk. That would look bad. For the election."

"Right."

* * *

Stoick wasn't sure where to go.

Where did kids normally buy clothes? He himself had not gone clothes shopping quite awhile – once he'd started running for mayor, he'd definitely become more aware of his appearance, and how he looked for the public, but beyond getting rid of things he'd been meaning to throw out for years, he had not drastically varied his wardrobe.

Where did kids buy clothes these days? He'd heard tell of a new store opening a block from his apartment complex, but he couldn't remember if it was the kind of place for riffraff. He didn't want to risk dragging an impressionable child to a shop with heavily tattooed or pierced teenagers.

Oh, sure, he knew where he shopped whenever he needed a new garment, but was that the place for Hiccup? For some reason, he was deathly afraid of buying Hiccup something other kids his age might look at and judge. Thirteen was the age in which kids really seemed to register what they were wearing; of course if Hiccup wandered in clad in raggedy secondhand jeans from an orphanage or a piece that had been popular when Stoick was younger, he was going to get laughed at.

And there were a lot of things that Stoick didn't do – date, smile much, start on his taxes before April – but asking for help definitely topped the list. And a _child_ would not force him to break that rule, even if his name was Hiccup and he had been slowly but surely working to break those rules all into pieces. Even if he had somehow made Stoick break that rule about not smiling time and again; even if something about him had made the man talk about his past once or twice. No matter. Hiccup was not going to be the reason he broke this one, because he wasn't going to. He was not going to admit that he had no idea what to do.

But where to go?

He knew there was a Dress Code just a mile away, but for some reason, now, when it really counted, he couldn't recall whether it was a clothing store in general, or a _women's _clothing store – all he could really remember the place selling was frilly skirts, but maybe there were a few things for boys in there, too. The least he could do was look.

And if the place turned out to be full of elderly women, well, he'd just pretend he'd taken a wrong turn. Hiccup could not know that the man in the driver's seat was internally agonizing over _clothing_, and the idea of being wrong.

Decision made, the man twisted the steering wheel in the direction of the store, already preparing to make the turn that would set them in the right direction.

As the building came into view, the man anxiously scanned the parking lot…_please let there be a man here, please let there be one man here_…wait, that was a man, right? No, but he was with a woman…oh, but wait, there was a man, and he was all alone, and he carried a bag! Yes! Success!

Quietly elated, Stoick slid into a parking space.

"C'mon. Let's go."


	28. Chapter 28

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: Oh, my gosh, guys, I am so_ sorry_! I have no idea why I took so long in writing this chapter, but I guess I just...lost the inspiration? I guess? But tbh, that's NO excuse, and I feel horrible, truly, I do - I looked up one day and realized I hadn't updated this or Overachiever since November, and I was like holy hell has it seriously been that long? So I told myself I had to update something, and I decided it would be this, as this is easier to write than Overachiever. I do have the start of an Overachiever chapter written out and I feel like it's a really strong beginning but I just need something more to happen in the chapter because currently it's too short xD So. Basically, the second half will probably be filler. **

**Anyway, this is chapter 28 of Hard Knocks - or, the one in which Hiccup falls back into his Oliver Twist train of thought - and I just can't believe we're here. Honestly, guys, this is all started as a random idea in my head two years ago and now we're over forty thousand words in and I'm just getting started, honestly. There will be more stuff to come, much more. And you guys have just supported me so much and been so great and truly I don't know where this story or I would be without you guys; you have really helped keep this story going and are the reason I wrote on it today. (Well, that and the Annie soundtrack, tbh. "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" guilted me into picking up my pen.) **

**I've read some really great books this year, too :) I'm already at like 33 or 34 new books already, and I'm kind of proud of myself. :) I went to the bookstore in February with all my gift cards (it was right after Christmas what do you expect) and I ended up with eleven books and I was like oh my gosh I have a problem xDDDD oh, PS, do you guys like the new summary? I think it's better. Anyway, how many books have you guys read this year? Any really great ones? (If you think I should read it, too, go ahead and leave the title and author name and I'll add it to my list.) **

* * *

This was, Hiccup concluded, certainly very different from how he usually received a new garment.

Receiving new clothes meant pulling on torn, used jeans or rolling up the sleeves of his thoroughly secondhand shirt several times just to find his hands, smiling as convincingly as possible at Ms. Hannigan as he told her it fit fine, he liked his clothes a bit loose, after all, and knowing it was no use complaining, for it was the best the woman could do and it would just have to be good enough. Receiving new clothes meant fraying jeans with a thousand tiny holes, or a beat-up shirt with a hundred little stains, and spending hours trying to scrub and patch the outfit into something usable. Sometimes he was successful and sometimes he wasn't, but he always pulled the garment on anyway, despite its flaws, for there was nothing else he could do. Receiving new clothes meant shoving on whatever was available and never mind what wasn't, for no, he couldn't afford nice things and yes, that was a bit disappointing, and yes, these pants were more holes than fabric at this point, but no, he wouldn't say a word because everyone went without something in the orphanage and for him, it tended to be well-fitting clothes.

Receiving new clothes was not, and indeed, had never been, driving to clean, bright, nice-smelling stores with gleaming silver racks of unworn shirts and neatly-pressed jeans; it was not and had never been an adult taking him by the hand and leading him through the racks, questioning his size; and it was not an adult telling him to find his size and once he had, to get whatever he wanted – within reason, Mr. Maddox added hastily, as if he thought sometimes Hiccup strayed miles past reason.

Receiving new clothes was not, and had never been stepping into well-lit dressing rooms and finding jeans that fit without a belt or anything of the sort, was not an adult looking down at him with kind gray eyes and speaking in a kind voice, telling him to speak up if he thought of anything he needed.

Receiving new clothes did not and had never meant an adult buying him a thick, warm jacket, a pair of gloves, or boots; receiving new clothes was not and had never been anyone asking if he thought he might need new sneakers, too, asking him if his current ones still fit.

Receiving new clothes, Hiccup thought, was not supposed to go like this, it simply wasn't; and when Mr. Maddox questioned him, he was reluctant to admit to the full truth of his rather embarrassing wardrobe, and merely shrugged when the man questioned the condition of his shoes. Mr. Maddox raised thick eyebrows questioningly and added, "Hiccup, I'm serious. If you need them, tell me now because I'm not taking you back here."

At this warning, the boy shrugged, a bit uncomfortably, and clasped his hands together as he spoke. "I don't…I don't know. These are tight, I guess. I'll live," he added quickly.

"I'm not asking if you'll live," an exasperated Mr. Maddox told him. "I want a straight answer – are those uncomfortable or painful?"

"I dunno. Uncomfortable, I guess. A little. I said they're tight."

"Well, that's what I'm looking for," the man replied, taking the boy's small hand in his – his grip was warm and firm and Hiccup obeyed it, stumbling behind the other. When he thought to look around again rather than blindly following the man, he realized the shelves were stacked with shoeboxes.

Receiving new clothes, Hiccup thought, was very different indeed with Mr. Maddox.

* * *

The rest of the day passed in a bit of a blur to Hiccup – an enjoyable blur, certainly, a happy blur, a pleasurable blur, indeed, but still a rather speedy whirlwind of color and emotion and sound, and at the end of the day, climbing into the glistening Thunderdrum, the engine purring quietly beneath him, he could only pick out bits and pieces. Finding sneakers that actually fit, Mr. Maddox thrusting the new jacket at him and telling him to put it on before they went outside; the man offering, without any sort of reason at all, to buy him a hot chocolate from the coffee shop, and the feel of the warm, white foam cup in his hand, the thick, sweet, dark liquid in his mouth; the sign on the store, promising a key in no more than two minutes, and the old man behind the counter with twinkling, pale blue eyes who smiled at him and made him want to smile back; and then the tiny, silver key pressed into his palm, the metal still warm from Mr. Maddox's fingers, and the sudden realization that he had never had a key before – the only home he had ever had was the orphanage and much as he cared for Ms. Hannigan, he realized now that he had a comparison, what a poor home it had been.

And at the end of the day, they drove back to the apartment, the car trundling on determinedly through the steadily falling snow, and Mr. Maddox smiled at him, and looking down at the key and thinking of the new clothes and the hot chocolate, he knew it was for the election, every bit of it, none of it was real, none of it would matter in a few days, it would all disappear…

But for now, he was going back to a warm, dry apartment, and he would have enough food before he fell asleep, and Toothless' warm, furry body would press into his in the bed, and everything would be okay and things would be alright. So for two seconds, Hiccup allowed himself to pretend.


	29. Chapter 29

_**Hard Knocks **_

**A/N: So I set out to write on_ Rabbit Hole_ \- you know, that RotG/HTTYD crossover AU I keep promising everyone will have angst later? - and this happened instead. What is life. (Though in my defense, I was listening to the Annie soundtrack today so yeah. There is my excuse. I'm sticking to it.) **

**Hiccup again sounds vaguely like he stepped straight out of _Oliver Twist_ but I'm 1000 miles beyond caring at this point. **

* * *

To tell the truth, Stoick didn't even really notice the silence, at first.

He supposed he should have – quiet was a rare thing indeed when Hiccup was your companion, and considering the auburn-haired boy lounged in the seat beside him, sipping hot chocolate from the steaming Styrofoam cup clutched in one freckled hand, he _should_ have spent the time it lasted wisely. Perhaps thanking every deity that came to mind for this unexpected reprieve.

Yet he found himself so deep in thought that, when he did realize the only sound currently came from the Thunderdrum itself, faithfully puffing blasts of mercifully warm air through the dashboard vents, he was not even in the proper state of mind to appreciate it. As reluctant as he was to admit it, the scene in Dress Code today _bothered_ him.

Of course, it was ridiculous; he himself knew that. When he considered all the things Hiccup had told him about the orphanage prior to this outing, he had to concede he should have foreseen it; he should_ not_ have been so surprised, he realized, to find the boy's needs had been so neglected; and more than that, more than anything else right then, he knew without a doubt that he should not have cared quite so much. He'd fixed the problem, right? He'd handled things. All that mattered – all that_ should_ have mattered to him – was the _now_. _Now_ Hiccup had proper winter attire; _now_, Hiccup had sneakers that fit him; now, he had shirts with sleeves that did not fall beyond the wrist; now, he had jeans with no holes or frays or patches; now, he had clothes.

And Stoick should not have been so bothered with the thought that he previously hadn't.

Ahead of them, the traffic light's glowing yellow face switched suddenly to smoldering red; the man lightly tapped his brakes, bringing the Thunderdrum to a crawl before a complete stop. For a moment, he gazed unseeingly out through the windshield, eyes fixed upon the road but thoughts far from it.

Without warning, Hiccup broke the silence. Abandoning his empty foam container in the nearest cup holder and pressing his face excitedly to the window, the kid exclaimed, "There's the tree lot!"

"Which one?" Stoick demanded, pressing lightly on the gas, sending the vehicle inching forward. "Probably another one of those insanely early ones run by overly enthusiastic people who insist on starting up in November, never mind that the needles will have turned brown by Christmas and become completely unsellable?"

"E-early?" Hiccup sputtered incredulously, tearing his gaze from the window to look at the man beside him. "It's _December_, Mr. Maddox."

"I know that." He kept his eyes fixed on the traffic light, fingers clenched tight around the wheel. "I'm only saying it's too soon to start going around picking out trees."

"…Have you checked your calendar in awhile?"

"Of course I've checked my calendar, I check it every morning, that's where I…why are you_ looking_ at me like that?" Stoick finally pulled his eyes from the road, to see the boy staring at him in obvious bemusement.

"It's…Mr. Maddox, Christmas is next week."

Stoick blinked. "You're joking."

"I'm guessing you don't celebrate." Hiccup cupped his hands and propped his chin within them, eyes drifting back to the window; when he spoke the words, there was something strangely wistful in the way he said them.

"There's no point."

The traffic light turned back to green, and Stoick put the Thunderdrum back in motion; the sleek blue vehicle sped through the icy Ohio streets, and for a moment, all was silent once more.

"No, I guess there's not," Hiccup responded quietly.

The man hesitated a moment before voicing his question. "Did…did Mrs. Hannigan ever celebrate it in the orphanage?"

"Not…not_ really_." It seemed Hiccup had to think about it for awhile, still staring out the window. "I mean, she liked to when she_ could_ – I remember when I was…seven, maybe eight, and she found this old tree…it was turning brown, and I think the man running the lot had been planning to throw it out but since he wasn't going to make any money off it, he agreed to give it to Mrs. Hannigan at a lower price, so she got that…then she found these multicolored lights in a garbage can, I think…but those gave out the night before Christmas…I mean, they were in the trash, we should have seen that coming…that was also the year she managed to get us a present, we got this big, one-thousand piece puzzle…spent the whole day putting it together, and when we were done, before we went to bed, Mrs. Hannigan bought a whole bunch of these—you know, those packets of hot chocolate mix that come with the marshmallows already in them? Mrs. Hannigan got some of those…well, she actually searched the whole place high and low until she found some, and then we all stayed up together making them and then drinking them when we were done…there weren't enough packets for everyone, so we ended up sharing. Come to think of it, I shared with Fishlegs who looked a little sick that year, but he's always coming down with something so I didn't think anything of it, but the next morning, I woke up practically coughing up my lungs." Hiccup sat back in his seat, a faint smile on his face, before adding softly, "…that was the only year we could do anything…"

"That's…that's_ all_?"

"That's all," Hiccup confirmed quietly; then, without warning, he smiled, mood lightening suddenly. "I'm really lucky, too – some orphanages, they don't even try. Least Mrs. Hannigan always gets a wreath for the front doors."

Stoick did not say anything more; but he did bestow one final glance back upon the tree lot over his shoulder, and wondered if perhaps the apartment might look brighter with some greenery this year.


End file.
